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Student nurses, midwives and allied health professionals who may be exposed to the flu during placements within NHS Boards should receive the flu vaccination in line with all other NHS healthcare workers.

A joint letter is issued each year from the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Nursing Officer to the NHS setting out the arrangements for flu season. This highlights the importance of the flu vaccination being offered by employers for staff or other individuals who may be at risk of occupational exposure.

The Scottish Government has overall responsibility for health and social care policy in Scotland. However, the statutory responsibility for delivering or commissioning services at a local level lies with local authorities, NHS Boards and integrated health and social care partnerships. From 2015 the Scottish Government provided additional financial support to enhance clinical nurse specialist provision and care. The report on specialist nursing and care fund published in September 2017 can be accessed here . Operational decisions, including the care of people with myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN) and whether there is a need for additional MPN specialist nurses, are therefore matters for these bodies. To date, NHS Boards have not raised any concerns with me about a lack of MPN specialist nurses.

The additional funding provided to Boards since 2017 was allocated on a criteria based assessment process, that ensured that funding was directed to initiatives that specifically addressed patients waiting the longest in specialties with the longest waits. Boards have been required to meet milestones and trajectories that demonstrate they are reducing numbers of patients waiting, and these milestones are reviewed on an ongoing basis.

The effectiveness of funding will be measured against and determined on the basis of performance achieved in relation to the reduction of patients waiting and the degree to which sustainable solutions have been put in place to reduce demand capacity gaps. I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-18635 on 8 October 2018 for information on the key specialties being funded in 2018-19. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at .

The Scottish Government does not hold this information centrally. Since 2016, it has been the responsibility of Integration Authorities to commission and plan specialist palliative and end of life care services and supports to meet the needs of their local population. Before 2016, this responsibility lay with Health Boards and Councils for health and social care services respectively.

Funding for specialist palliative and end of life care services is drawn from the overall funds allocated to Integration Authorities by the Scottish Government. As such, officials are unable to provide the information in the way Mr Briggs has requested.

The Scottish Government is working with the Chief Finance Officers and Chief Officers of Integration Authorities to improve clarity on financial reporting arrangements. A consolidated financial report is now provided on a quarterly basis to the Scottish Parliament's Health and Sport Committee and provides an overview of the finances of the Integration Authorities.

Vaccination policy in Scotland, as with the rest of the UK, is based on recommendations from the JCVI. The JCVI is an independent, expert group which provides advice on all aspects of vaccination to the four UK health departments.

For the 2018-19 flu season, the JCVI recommended an adjuvanted trivalent (aTIV) flu vaccine for those aged 65 years and over. They agreed that the use of this vaccine should be a priority for people aged 75 and over as the evidence shows this group are the most at risk of the complications of flu. Those aged 65 to 74 years are offered trivalent flu vaccine which still provides protection against flu.

Evidence regarding the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine in those aged 65 years and older in the United Kingdom can be found in the Eurosurveillance report using the following link:

Through the previous £5 million recruitment and retention fund 39 new GPs were recruited. We’ve increased the GP recruitment and retention fund in 2018-19 to £7.5 million to fund a range of initiatives to encourage GPs to remain in or to return to the profession. This includes GP training bursaries to incentivise a career in general practice. These initiatives are part of a wider package of measures that will, over the next decade, increase the number of GPs working in Scotland by at least 800. We will continue to monitor progress in delivering on this commitment.

Scottish Government data is not available for individual local authorities or regions with reference to Munchausen by proxy syndrome or fabricated or induced illness (FII).

The offence of child abuse arising from FII is a criminal offence under Section 12 (schedule 1) (“Cruelty to persons under 16”) of the Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Act 1937. The table below shows the total number of prosecutions in Scotland under section 12 schedule 1 from 2007 to 2017:

Table of Information has been filed with SPICe under BIB Number: 60209

Further to the answer to question S5W-13509, in 2018-19 a final payment of £87,500 has been made in support of this work.

The answer to S5W-14264 on 23 February 2018, clarified that due to data protection laws and the very small number of research posts involved, the Scottish Government cannot release information that could lead to individuals being identified, which would breach their right to privacy.

The following summarises progress against the activities set out in the answer to question S5W-13509:

Consultation on the Core Minimum Dataset (CMD) is now complete. Recent progress, including responses to the consultation exercise, is available at

The Scottish Government is currently liaising with the project team and NHS Information Services Division (ISD) to agree how the Core Minimum Dataset and Quality Performance Indicators will become part of routinely collected data that is reported by ISD.

The evidence-based guideline for the Management of Chronic Pain in Children and Adolescents is now published at

The systematic review of interventions to support the reduction of opioid treatment is in progress, as part of the implementation of the Scottish Chronic Pain Prescribing Strategy . This will provide standalone guidance for prescribers to support discussions with patients about withdrawing from opioid drugs where this is safe and appropriate. This resource is also being used to update the opioids section of the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network – Guideline-136.

Updates on the work of the Scottish Pain Research Community can be found at .

On behalf of the National Advisory Committee for Chronic Pain (NACCP), the Deputy Chief Medical Officer commissioned Scottish NHS Boards to provide information about the quantity of different healthcare professionals working within specialist pain services across Scotland, as well as qualitative information about recruitment/ retention challenges and succession planning for this workforce group.

The information is still being collated and assessed, in accordance with the data protection laws, to consider whether the data is identifiable to individuals and should be treated as personal data. This will determine what information can be shared with the NACCP in the first instance, who in turn will advise what findings should be published, alongside minutes of its meeting, on the Scottish Government website at .

The number of infants up to one year of age that have been admitted to hospital with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)-related bronchiolitis in each financial year since 2010-11 and the number of these with (a) bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) or chronic lung disease, (b) congenital heart disease and (c) severe combined immunodeficiency syndrome (SCID), is provided in the tables below.

Table 1: Scotland and HB of treatment: 2010-11-2017-18: Number of infants with a diagnosis of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)-related bronchiolitis).