Tackling Infectious Diseases — House of Commons, 2017-04-20
Topic: Health
Carol Frances Monaghan (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I congratulate the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) on securing this debate. He mentioned the three big killers worldwide—HIV, TB and malaria—and I will talk a little about them, too. The hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) introduced the work on Ebola and Zika. He spoke about the possibility of a new worldwide killer disease, which could have devastating consequences, and how we might react to it. The increased UK Government funding to tackle neglected tropical diseases was mentioned by the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton). Although that funding is very welcome, it is probably a drop in the ocean, given what is required to tackle these diseases properly. The hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen) mentioned the Ebola outbreak, the difficulties in developing vaccines and treatments when there is no economic incentive to do so, and the lack of manufacturing facilities in the UK for such a huge programme Vaccination, antimicrobial drugs and improved hygiene mean that infectious diseases are not the massive killer they once were in the UK, but they are still a major health and economic burden for us. In other parts of the world, they are a major killer. We know that HIV and other forms of sexually transmitted infection are rampant just now in sub-Saharan Africa, but even in the UK 100,000 people are living with HIV. The number of cases of genital warts has decreased as a result of the increased use of the human papillomavirus vaccine, but rates of syphilis and gonorrhoea have significantly increased, with many cases being diagnosed late. Those conditions will have huge health implications, even here in the UK I wish to discuss the three diseases that the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall, talked about. Malaria is currently threatening half the world’s population, and it claims the life of a child in Africa every minute, so 50 children will have died as a result of Malaria in Africa while this debate has been going on. That is a damning statistic. Tuberculosis has killed more than any other disease in history, and last year it killed 1.8 million people globally—5,000 people every day. TB—the world’s leading killer—is airborne, which makes things difficult as it means it is hugely infectious. It is also increasingly resistant to drugs. TB does not just affect the developing world; we are seeing recurrences of it in major world cities, including London. As the hon. Gentleman mentioned, our response to TB is chronically underfunded, but as he also said, for every $1 invested in TB care, we have a yield of $30, which means there should be an incentive—a moral and economic case—for increasing our efforts Alexander Fleming warned in 1945 that micro-organisms could develop resistance to his new antibiotics, and unfortunately that prediction has proven correct. A report published by the World Health Organisation in 2014 said that antibiotic resistance was now a global threat, on a par with other global threats. The inappropriate prescription of antibiotics affects our ability to tackle diseases. I found some statistics about Scotland, and the picture there reflects that in the rest of the UK. In 2014, 55,000—1% of our population—were taking antibiotics at any one time. The problem is that in up to 50% of those cases, antibiotics were unnecessary and the condition would have improved without them. It is essential that we seek to educate people on the use of antibiotics, and that our GPs and others doing the prescribing use them far less Resistance is, of course, a natural biological phenomenon, but it is increased by the misuse of medicines and poor infection control. It is a particular concern with regard to antibiotics. Many of the medical advances we have made over recent years—such as organ transplantation and even chemotherapy—need antibiotics to prevent and treat the bacterial infections that such treatments can cause. Without effective antibiotics, even minor surgery and routine operations become high-risk here in the UK.