1. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd on 2 December 2020.
5. Will the Minister make a statement on sight-loss treatment in north Wales? OQ55966
Throughout the pandemic, optometric practices and hospital eye care departments have been open for essential and urgent eye care. Services have been impacted by the pandemic, however. Health boards are working hard to ensure patients who are at risk from sight loss are treated in as timely a manner as possible.
Thank you. Ten months have proceeded without monthly data on ophthalmology out-patients being published. Four days ago, BBC Wales disclosed that Mrs Helen Jeremy has been left blind after treatment delayed due to the pandemic. Mrs Jeremy lives in Bridgend, but many are facing a crisis in the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board. Now, RNIB have warned that thousands more people in Wales are at risk of irreversible sight loss because of these treatment delays. An FOI by BBC Wales to all health boards found more than 33,000 people at risk of sight loss were simply waiting too long for treatment. Forty per cent of hyper reflective foci patients were waiting beyond their clinically safe target date as of May 2020, and the number of people waiting more than nine months for cataract surgery has quadrupled. So will you, Minister, act on the calls of the director of RNIB Cymru and provide sufficient resources to make sure that these people are seen and their eyesight is saved?
I recognise that delayed treatment in eye care can lead to irreversible sight loss. So, this isn't about the ability to recover or needing more radical treatment to recover; it can be that the sight loss takes place and you can't reverse it. As you'll know, before the pandemic, we'd started on a reform process around not just the measures, but to then drive better clinical prioritisation and behaviour, and it's actually highlighted, I think, a more open understanding of what our lists show, because previously, you could have achieved a target without necessarily getting to the people in the greatest need, or at the greatest risk of suffering sight loss. So, our planned care board is already bringing people together, including the RNIB, and I think it's fair to say that the challenge they're making in public is one they're also making in the meetings they have with officials. It's really important we continue to work with them about improving sight loss services, and this will be a really significant challenge through the pandemic and then after it as well.
If nothing else, the pandemic has reiterated the need for reform with a purpose within our healthcare system. The reforms we've started, I think, are still the right ones, but it's about how we drive them forward with an even greater sense of pace and urgency, and the real can-do spirit that has highlighted and characterised the response by the national health service during the pandemic needs to carry into the recovery phase. So, I look forward to continuing to work with the RNIB and I'm sure they'll continue to challenge in both the private engagements they have as well as their public commentary, as you would expect.