Cancer sufferers set to get access to treatment nationwide as the Scottish Government aims to restart NHS surgery
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has revealed that Scotland is ramping up efforts to manufacture tens of millions of items of personal protective equipment.
She made the announcement at the daily briefing where health secretary Jeane Freeman also revealed a plan to restart all cancer surgeries.
Ms Freeman said that she would be writing to health board chiefs later today to set out how cancer treatment nationwide will be based on clinical need.
It means that when a medical service becomes available a patient will be offered access to it no matter where they live in Scotland.
Ms Sturgeon meanwhile said work is under way to establish a manufacturing base for personal protective equipment (PPE).
She said: “Alongside a public health emergency we're also now dealing with an economic emergency on a scale that none of us have experienced before and that requires, and will get, the attention and the focus of the Scottish Government just as the health emergency has and continues to get.
“Mitigating and addressing the economic loss of Covid-19, of course, is going to become an even greater priority in the weeks and months ahead, indeed as part of our response to that, we also want to help businesses where possible to adapt and to find new markets.
“One of the areas where we have been doing that already is in relation to PPE in Scotland, we are publishing a report today that summarises how we are securing PPE for health and care workers in Scotland.
“It also sets out what we're doing to develop a manufacturing chain for that equipment and to demonstrate the scale of some of this work it may be worth looking at an item such as fluid resistant surgical masks.
“Prior to Covid-19, national services Scotland would provide around 57,000 of those masks to our health and social care workers every week but now instead of needing 57,000 a week, we need 4.5 million million a week.
“That is an 80-fold increase and to meet that demand we're importing equipment from overseas – 100 million fluid resistant masks have been imported from China and we have got a further 60 million on order
“But we're also working to establish in Scotland a domestic supply. Alpha Solway which is a firm based in south west Scotland specialises in protective clothing is due to start producing masks in August.
“A number of smaller Scottish enterprises are planning to make visors, CalaChem Ltd has produced 580,000 litres of hand sanitizer at its plant in Grangemouth and it's using ethanol provided by Whyte and Mackay.”
Ms Freeman then advised that following the framework document revealed last week to launch the restart of NHS Scotland that it would be kicking off with cancer surgeries.
She said: “Though the majority of cancer treatment has continued some treatment plans have changed due to the new risk posed by the virus and that has been particularly the case in terms of cancer surgery.
“The decision to postpone or delay some cancer treatments is one that I know none of our doctors would have advised without a lot of careful thought and compassion and I'm grateful to them for that.
“Now as we begin to slowly and safely restart our NHS I am pleased to be announcing today the framework for the recovering of cancer surgery. It has two key aims that I want to see met.
“Firstly, that all patients are prioritised in the same way across Scotland and secondly that within that prioritisation patients are offered the earliest available appointment for the surgery."
“That appointment may be outside their local board area but that is in order to allow us to ensure that prioritisation is the same across the country no matter where patients live and that they are given the earliest possible opportunity.
“Prioritising patients on the basis of clinical need requires regional working, sometimes national working, across our health boards and I'm waiting today to our boards chief executive to set that out.”
