E.Coli update

We had a statement on the E.Coli outbreak from the Health Minister on Wednesday, when I intervened:

Leighton Andrews: As we have all said, this has been a serious outbreak. It affected my constituency from the first day that the revelations came about that E.coli had spread among Valleys communities, as a school in my constituency was affected. I want to raise an issue that I have mentioned to you privately, namely that it is important that lessons are learnt quickly and that we do not wait for the outcomes of inquiries. There are lessons that can be learnt from what has happened in the last few weeks. In particular, some concerns were raised with me by the family of one of the children affected in my constituency relating to the response of a local GP practice, and the out-of-hours service, which I will raise when I meet my local health board next week. Is this also something that the chief medical officer could look at in his report to you? I am talking about the way in which particular organisations within the health service responded on the ground in the context of this crisis.

The Minister replied:

Brian Gibbons: The whole point of the task and finish group is to get the lessons that are apparent at an early stage into legislation or proper process and practice. In terms of being judicious in learning the preliminary lessons, the chief medical officer’s audit and review will hopefully deliver that for us. In the list of areas that he is likely to look at—and the list was not meant to be exhaustive, but seemed to be fairly comprehensive—the out-of-hours issue does not feature. This is a difficult one. If people feel that the out-of-hours service did not operate effectively, they must formally complain themselves or, possibly, through your good offices seek an explanation from the local health board. We need this sort of feedback.

Yesterday the Food Standards Agency (FSA) published their audit report on the inspection regime at Bridgend Council, which is responsible for regulating the food supplier which is being investigated currently. The Western Mail has a summary. I called for this to be published two weeks ago, and tabled a Freedom of Information Request to the FSA.