The next petition is PE953 by Jean Gall on behalf of the Scottish Association for Sleep Apnoea. It calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Executive to increase awareness, promote proper diagnosis and treatment, and provide sufficient resources, including adequately funded sleep centres, to tackle the health problems associated with obstructive sleep apnoea. I will do my best on the pronunciation—it is one of those words that will confuse me for the rest of the afternoon.We have a copy of the written submissions from the Executive on 22 March 2007, from NHS Scotland on 19 April and from the petitioner on 11 June. Also present is Christine Grahame, who has expressed an interest in the petition. If there are no views from committee members on how to proceed with the petition, I will ask Christine Grahame to comment.
Official Report · Committee
Current Petitions
Sleep Apnoea (PE953)
Speakers
Choose an MSP to read only their contributions- Frank McAveety Lab 8
- Christine Grahame SNP 7
- Rhoda Grant Lab 1
The record
16 contributionsI am looking at the Official Report of the committee meeting in February 2007, when the committee agreed to write to the then Executive on producing guidelines for health boards to follow, given that what was once a national service has become a local service and that at least 55,000 people suffer from something that is entirely manageable. Have you had a response to that?
We received a response. I apologise to members, as this is the first time I have seen it. It was sent on 22 March by the then Deputy Minister for Health and Community Care, Lewis Macdonald. I will try to summarise it as best I can.The letter refers to the study on screening for the sleep apnoea/hypopnoea syndrome and driving impairment in professional drivers. It says:"Difficulty in obtaining access to professional drivers and other factors meant that the survey achieved a smaller than expected sample size and it was deemed therefore inappropriate to move on to the more detailed sleep studies in the second stage of the project. A significant minority of drivers surveyed reported falling asleep while driving, or having had an accident or near miss due to sleepiness while driving. Symptom reports suggest that around 8 per cent had Obstructive Sleep Apnoea/Hypopnoea Syndrome, which is within the range reported by other studies of professional drivers".In a sense, the letter is not that substantial. That is where we are.
This is a serious issue. In road traffic accidents, we are unable to determine whether somebody has fallen asleep at the wheel, but many drivers will admit that they have dozed off while driving, and lorry drivers are in particular danger because of their sedentary lifestyle. On top of all the other issues, a road traffic accident with fatalities costs about £1 million to the public purse.At the committee's meeting on 6 February, one question that Jackie Baillie posed was:"Are you going to produce guidelines for health boards to follow?"She said:"The Executive is to be commended for setting up the Scottish sleep forum, but there is still a lack of a framework for health boards to take this forward. Perhaps we could pose those questions."The convener replied:"We should ask those questions. Is that agreed?"—Official Report, Public Petitions Committee, 6 February 2007; c 3087-88. The committee agreed to that, but Jackie Baillie's question has not been answered, has it?
My impression from the notes that are in front of me is that the question has not been answered.
I understand that, given the change of Government, it would be unfair or too cruel—
I do not want to blame the Government.
Not yet, convener—give us time. As a new minister is in place, we should emphasise that the petition has been on the go for 18 months. The committee worthily pursues issues for the public, but perhaps some ministerial responses are not being provided crisply and promptly enough. That question needs to be answered.
I suggest that we reinvigorate that inquiry, particularly on what plans the Government has for Scottish intercollegiate guidelines network guideline 73 to be revised and updated and what plans it has to address the issues that the petition raises, such as whether resources are being made available for health boards and others to address the concerns.
When Jackie Baillie made her commendable suggestions, she said:"I note that my health board, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, is not included."—Official Report, Public Petitions Committee, 6 February 2007; c 3087.That means that a substantial area of Scotland was not included. We need clarity from the minister about the resources and the guidelines for referral to sleep centres, so that we can draw together a picture of what is happening. Some people wait a year for an assessment.
This is another issue on which we need to find out whether cross-cutting information on the same treatment is being issued across health boards, regardless of the health board area.
I hope that nobody in the health department has been asleep on the job on the issue.
If you saw the Official Report of the meeting on 6 February, you would realise that I must have been asleep, because I could not remember what to call an air traffic controller.
Committee members have made helpful suggestions. I thank Christine Grahame for coming to express her views on the petition. We want to ask several questions about the response and we will cover Rhoda Grant's point about consistency across health boards.I thank Christine Grahame for her time. She is welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting if she wants to.
I will listen to what the committee says about the petition on high hedges, on which many of us have been lobbied.
That is fair enough.
In this meeting
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