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The additional £30 million for planned care, initially announced in April, will support health boards across the country deliver around 12,000 inpatient procedures, over 40,000 extra diagnostic procedures and around 12,000 new outpatient appointments.

Funding will target reductions to pandemic backlogs, including orthopaedics, ophthalmology, diagnostics for cancer referrals and patients waiting the longest time.

The funding will be allocated to health boards for the activity set out above based on delivery. We are working closely with health boards to monitor progress.

The Scottish Government remains committed to improving the care and wellbeing of people through the best use of digital technologies. We work closely with NHS National Services Scotland (NSS), who manage the rollout of the new national GP IT System, ‘Vision’ supplied by Cegedim Healthcare Solutions. Our focus always is on patient safety and the resilience of such systems. The recent performance issue referred to was quickly identified as due to bandwidth capacity and was quickly resolved, since when there has been stable and consistent service for GP practices using Vision.

Decisions on prescribing medicines are a matter of clinical judgement for the prescribing clinician in consultation with their patient. These should be based on individual clinical need, informed by relevant advice such as that issued by the General Medical Council (GMC) and guidance for the medicine.

The Scottish Government’s Menopause Clinical Reference Group, Chaired by Dr Heather Currie, has discussed the prescribing of testosterone for women in menopause. This group is exploring supplementary guidance for healthcare professionals on prescribing testosterone for loss of libido in menopause, in line with the British Menopause Society and National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance.

In response to the increasing number of laboratory-confirmed cases of pertussis that have been reported in Scotland as well as other parts of the UK and Europe, the Scottish Government is working closely with Public Health Scotland (PHS) and NHS Maternity Services to raise awareness of the risks of pertussis, particularly to young infants and to promote timely vaccination uptake as well as emphasising the importance of pertussis vaccination during pregnancy to protect newborn infants.

A National Incident Management Team (IMT) was convened by PHS on 23 May to ensure best practice across all Boards, including addressing any issues locally that might cause vaccination to be delayed.

The National Pertussis Incident Management Team continues to meet regularly to consider and review all actions in response to the increase in pertussis cases.

The Chief Midwifery Officer wrote to Maternity Services on 15 May 2024 encouraging midwives to promote the offer of vaccination to pregnant women.

The Chief Medical Officer wrote to Immunisation Coordinators and Directors of Public Health on about the importance of timely vaccination of infants and young children. He also wrote to Medical Directors and health professionals on to encourage all health care staff in priority groups working with infants and pregnant women to keep up to date with their own pertussis vaccinations via their occupational health services.

Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) is the national health and social care improvement organisation for Scotland which develops standards and indicators to support health and social care organisations improve the quality of care and support they deliver.

To support nationwide improvements in the quality of care, work is currently underway to develop a set of healthcare standards which outline the requirements for all healthcare services across Scotland.

Healthcare Improvement Scotland will publish draft National Healthcare Standards for consultation by 31 January 2025. It is anticipated that the final National Healthcare Standards will be published by end summer 2025.

The Scottish Government grant to the University of Glasgow for this purpose funds one PhD studentship and a number of small projects. The projects are currently at different stages, outputs from some of the projects are expected before the end of the year and all are expected to be completed by Spring 2025.

The successful candidate for the PhD studentship took up their post in January 2024 and the projects and PhD studentship are both wholly managed by the University of Glasgow.

As is standard with high quality research, it is anticipated that the findings will be published in relevant peer reviewed journals.

Scottish Government funding of over £2.5m has been committed to support the mental health and wellbeing of health and care staff in 2024-25. These resources include a 24/7 compassionate listening service, confidential mental health treatment through the Workforce Specialist Service and access to psychological therapies and interventions.

Prioritising these treatment and therapeutic programmes reflects our commitment to offer care and support to those staff suffering from stress, anxiety and other conditions. In addition, the National Wellbeing Hub offers a range of self-care wellbeing resources and signposting to relevant mental health and support services.

As set out in , from 1 August 2024 it is illegal to own an XL Bully dog in Scotland without a certificate of exemption, or without having applied for a certificate of exemption where a decision has not yet been made.

XL Bully dog owners had from 1 April 2024 to 31 July 2024 to apply to the Scottish Government for a certificate of exemption for their dog, to allow them to continue to legally own the dog.

3,308 certificates of exemption for XL Bully dogs have been issued to dog owners by the Scottish Government during the period 1 April 2024 to 31 July 2024.

454 were issued in April 2024

243 were issued in May 2024

479 were issued in June 2024

2,132 were issued in July 2024

The funding provided by Scottish Government, since 2020 for the National Wellbeing Hub for health and social care staff is broken down as follows:

2020-2021: £57,000

2021-2022: £85,000

2022-2023: £87,000

2023-2024: £191,000

2024-2025: £96,000

As part of the 2023- 24 COVID-19 and flu winter vaccination programme NHS Scotland delivered over 3.57 million winter vaccines, including 1,387,766 COVID-19 vaccines. Uptake of the COVID-19 vaccines dropped across all groups, but remained strong in the highest risk groups, with 85.6% of care home residents and 84.1% of those aged over 75 vaccinated which we know from recent statistics are the groups mostly likely to be admitted to hospital.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) is responsible for delivering with the support of the Scottish Government. The Scottish Vaccination and Immunisation Programme (SVIP) has already undertaken various pieces of work to understand why uptake has decreased, and this is part of an ongoing drive to ensure that people can take up offers of vaccine easily and equitably. Should the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) recommend a 2024 winter COVID-19 programme, we shall incorporate that learning into planning for any future campaign.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) is responsible for COVID-19 surveillance. Given the recent increase in circulation of COVID-19 observed in Scotland, PHS has returned to weekly updates to their viral respiratory dashboard from 27 June 2024 ( .Periodic peaks in COVID-19 are expected, not just in the winter.

COVID-19 is not a seasonal virus and circulates all year around and with the vaccine optimum protection period lasting up to 3 months, it remains essential that those who are eligible, come forward for vaccination when offered.