Part of 2. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:11 pm on 4 October 2016.
First Minister, given that recent reports have suggested we should have 88 epilepsy nurses in Wales and we’ve currently got nine, and given the difficulties we have in recruiting people, I’m not going to ask you to go and find 81 extra nurses overnight. However, what we could do is run specialised epilepsy clinics on a more frequent basis. Scotland has five such clinics for just over 5 million people and Northern Ireland has two for just under 2 million people. So, that’s about 1 million people per clinic and their populations are served well. Here in Wales, we’ve got one centre based in Cardiff for just over 3 million people. It is an absolutely known fact that 70 per cent of people with epilepsy could have their seizures better controlled if they had access to such services. At the moment, we’re only just over the 50 per cent mark in Wales. So, whilst we can’t magic up another 81 epilepsy nurses overnight, perhaps getting neurologists to hold a few more clinics in a more fair and accessible way throughout Wales could help us achieve the same.