Vaughan Gething: Look, I'm not here to try and say this is a piece of perfect legislation. The choice we make is whether to give our consent for the legislation to go ahead given the impact that it will have on our citizens if we do consent, or do not. If I were drafting this piece of legislation it would look differently, and I know the House of Lords has had concerns about the scope of the legislation, and...
Vaughan Gething: I announced on 5 March that free sanitary products will be available to all women in Welsh hospitals. I have asked officials to work with NHS Wales to implement this policy as soon as possible.
Vaughan Gething: Immunisation uptake rates in Wales remain at the top of international benchmarks and are comparable to other UK countries. The vast majority of children in Wales are fully immunised before they start school. Immunisation programmes are vital to protect individual children against preventable diseases and to provide herd immunity.
Vaughan Gething: The 'Together for Mental Health in North Wales 'strategy was published in 2017. The local health board’s all-age strategy was co-produced with service users and key partners in north Wales and outlines its approach to responding to mental health issues for people of all ages.
Vaughan Gething: We recognise the importance of people being aware of the symptoms of cancer, including ovarian cancer. It is vitally important cancers are diagnosed in earlier, more treatable stages. If people have concerns about significant symptoms or prolonged changes in their physical health, then we encourage people to see their GP.
Vaughan Gething: The Welsh Government is improving the provision of autism services. As well as implementing the ASD strategic action plan, including through the roll-out of the integrated autism services, I will also issue a code of practice on the delivery of autism services in order to guide service change.
Vaughan Gething: Betsi Cadwaladr University Local Health Board is currently implementing changes to vascular services, which were publically consulted on and agreed in January 2013 as part of its service change programme. We anticipate the service will be operational from 8 April 2019.
Vaughan Gething: The principle of ‘investigate once, investigate well’ is central to 'Putting Things Right'. It ensures complaints are investigated in a proportionate and consistent manner and complainants receive a response that addresses the concerns they have raised. If a complainant remains dissatisfied, they can contact the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales.
Vaughan Gething: Yes. The Welsh Government is committed to abolishing mixed-sex ward accommodation and to ensuring the safety, privacy and dignity of patients. All new hospital developments will be built to ensure single-sex accommodation, with guidance recommending a minimum of 50 per cent single bedrooms with en-suite facilities.
Vaughan Gething: The challenge about taking forward our work on having more appropriate services on miscarriage is one that I've charged officials to take forward with our health boards, and I'm more than happy to update Members on the detail of that work and when we can expect to see real, material differences. As we run through the work that I described in my first answer on changing the layout of wards to...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you. We are consulting on our new 'Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales' strategy. This will set out our long-term aims to reduce and prevent obesity across Wales. We currently have a range of preventative policies, funding and legislation, such as the daily mile, active travel and an obesity pathway.
Vaughan Gething: I understand the debate around targets perfectly well. The challenge, though, is that for the targets that England and Scotland have set, there isn't an evidence base that underpins those targets. I've not met a single public health professional who has been prepared to look me in the face and say that the targets make sense and they think they're going to reach them. The last thing I want to...
Vaughan Gething: We have a range of different measures in place. I described some of them in answer to the question. This isn't simply a matter for the health service. It is about health and health outcomes. For example, the daily mile is not something that the health service itself directly delivers, but it is working in partnership with schools about different forms of activity. Other schools won't have a...
Vaughan Gething: We're reviewing our tobacco control action plan to see that we do actually want to make further progress. We're looking again at the organisational structure, for example, of our stop-smoking services. Encouragingly, we saw more people come to the NHS Help Me Quit service this January compared to last January—a 20 per cent rise in people seeking help—but, of course, I'm always interested...
Vaughan Gething: I recognise the points about the targets and wanting to reach the targets and our ability to do so. Actually, before we achieved the 19 per cent interim target, there was widespread concern that we would not do that. So, it is possible for us still to match and meet that target, and that actually was an evidence-based target where we had a basis to set it and to want to achieve it. In terms...
Vaughan Gething: Actually, there's significant work already under way on trying to help women to quit before and during pregnancy. That work is being undertaken together with midwives and health visitors. You may have missed that, last year, I actually launched part of our campaign on this in Ysbyty Glan Clwyd. And that's together working with the midwives who are actually undertaking that care in the...
Vaughan Gething: Actually, when talking about the way in which the health service was being discussed in 2016, you'll remember a blanket, lazy and wildly inaccurate suggestion by a number of political players that the health service in Wales was the worst part of the United Kingdom. Actually, what the OECD report said very clearly was that simply is not true. It did, however, have criticisms to make about...
Vaughan Gething: I don't think that's a fair characterisation at all. When you look at what we're doing with NHS spending, I'm proud of the fact that we're putting more resources into the national health service, despite being 10 years deep into Tory austerity, and the choices we make are incredibly difficult and they have a real-world consequence in every single public service. And there is no easy choice to...
Vaughan Gething: Well, when we talk about how we transform and change the system, I'm not sure that there's a great track record in the conversation about who can sack who. Actually, that doesn't generate the sort of system transformation we want to see. If that were the case—you look at the system in England, where, actually, chief executives of acute NHS trusts have an average life span of less than two...
Vaughan Gething: I've actually been very encouraged by the response of the dentistry world to 'A Healthier Wales' and wanting to see that as a kick-start to the reform that they wish and need to take to make sure they're delivering the sort of service that they want to provide and that each of our communities expects as well. There are challenges around the country about our capacity to take on extra NHS...