6. 6. Debate: Diabetes Services in Wales

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:29 pm on 2 May 2017.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 4:29, 2 May 2017

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I want to thank all Members who took part in today’s debate. I will just run through some of the comments that have been made, in particular, and quite understandably, Rhun ap Iorwerth’s contribution. I want to deal with some of the points about structured education, because I do recognise the need for improvement—the need to have a proper audit trail to allow us to properly understand the level of take-up and what we can do to further improve the take-up that exists. It is a key part of managing the condition. It doesn’t get into, perhaps, the prevention that we’ve also discussed in a variety of contributions, but I recognise there’s something there for us to resolve. So, I do expect to be able to report in the future on the take-up of the Seren programme and that that’s had the desired impact in terms of the take-up of that structured education, in particular for type 1 diabetics, but also to see further progress made in NICE tests, because, actually, much of the fall-off has actually come down to one test where there’s been a significant fall-off and that’s the urine albumin test fall-off.

So, actually, when I talked about taking forward the audit findings and tackling the variation in care with our colleagues in primary and secondary care, that’s a really important part of understanding why there is that variation, for the testing, the care provided and the outcome. There’s real self-reflection within the profession about the fact that they are part of helping us to be able to do that. It isn’t just about trying to shift and saying this is all about the citizen taking all of the responsibility and all of the control. Actually, we’ve still got a responsibility in Government and within the service to do the right thing in terms of the care processes being there, as well as being properly accountable for what does and does not take place.

Again, in terms of Angela Burns’s contribution, which, again, I broadly welcome, what I would say about your focus on physical activity for young people—again, I recognise that it is really important, not just in this area, but a whole range of others. And it is important to see that tied in as part of the curriculum review for the future about how PE is taught. But, actually, we’re already taking steps to increase physical activity take-up in our schools—the daily mile being the most obvious example. There’s something here about not perceiving physical activity as playing sport. I, myself, love sports. I always enjoyed playing sport as a young person until I got injured out from playing sport competitively; I’m now competitive from the sidelines. But the challenge is about how we normalise physical activity and make it easy for people to do, and simple. Because I think there is a challenge about not just saying that physical activity equals sport. It is about that broader sense of how we renormalise activity in its broader sense so that people expect that and actually enjoy it.