Improving the Health Service

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:37 pm on 21 January 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:37, 21 January 2020

I thank the Member for that important supplementary question. I should just make it clear that sepsis numbers in Wales are falling and not rising, so the figures that were published are not Welsh figures—they have fallen in Wales since 2016. And that is because of some really groundbreaking work that has been done by clinicians here in Wales, led by some very far-sighted and committed clinicians, who have developed the early-warning signs system that we have for sepsis here in Wales, which is now being adopted in other parts of the health service more broadly, which makes sure that people are alert to those early signs that can easily enough be confused as a sign of something other than sepsis, to do the six steps that you need to take as a clinician to test for whether sepsis is what you're seeing in front of you, then to take rapid action. It's a really important issue, but I think we can genuinely claim that we have been in front of this debate in Wales, and that's why the figures in Wales have been falling.