Stroke Patients in the Rhondda

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:59 pm on 11 June 2019.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:59, 11 June 2019

I thank the Member for that important point, and I know that she will have welcomed the fact that smoking levels amongst young people in Wales are at an all-time low, as are alcohol figures in Wales. So, the public health messages that we have been conveying and the practical actions that have been taken through Public Health Wales, through community pharmacy, through what we do in schools, are having a positive effect on the levels of smoking in our community and amongst young people in particular. There is—as there is in so much of health—a socioeconomic gradient in it all, and those families who live in the most difficult of circumstances rely on smoking and other things to help them to get through those difficulties to an extent that people who live more advantaged lives are able to avoid, and that's why you see the figures to which the Member referred. But the good news, Llywydd, has to be that the actions that we have taken in Wales over recent years are being successful. We have a strong sense of the things that work. We need to do more of them, we need to calibrate them to those places where the challenge is greatest, but we're able to draw on that successful experience in order to do so.