HPR volume 11 issue 32: news (15 September)
Updated 15 December 2017
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PHE Health and Justice annual review 2016/17
This year’s PHE Health and Justice annual review has been published [1] in the wake of substantial changes being introduced in the prison estate in England and Wales as part of the government’s Prison Reform Agenda.
These changes, which pave the way for a new approach to co-commissioning of healthcare in prisons, were described in the recently published White Paper on Prison Safety and Reform [2]. The programme is being introduced through a phased-implementation approach, started in April 2017, that will see NHS England and empowered governors working together to meet the health needs of the prison population, taking account of both health services and the wider prison environment.
Within the context of the new co-commissioning approach, the need for evidence-based healthcare provision in prisons is emphasised so as to accurately measure health status, including changes over time and health service utilisation, in prisons. To this end, the Health and Justice annual review focusses on some of the sources of robust health and justice data used to inform healthcare decision making in prisons and provides details of related work programmes being undertaken by the Health and Justice team in order to implement the prison reform agenda. These include the development of a ‘dashboard’ of prison health metrics to measure improvements in healthcare and health outcomes as well as the establishment of a permanent Cross-Organisational Health and Justice Data, Evidence and Intelligence Group tasked with facilitating health data analysis and interpretation at the local, regional and national levels.
In keeping with the theme of a robust ‘health and justice evidence base’, Section 2 of the annual review highlights current data and evidence in relation to key public health concerns in the prison population including: a high prevalence of infectious diseases; high levels of substance misuse; and prisoners’ mental health needs. The latest data presented in the review indicate that prevalence of blood-borne viruses in the prison population is four times higher than in the general community, and TB incidence is five times greater.
To tackle these issues, the Health and Justice team have been involved in various initiatives such as the implementation of an nation-wide BBV ‘opt-out’ testing programme in prisons, which concludes in 2017/18, as well as chairing a cross-organisational Task and Finish Group which aims to improve active case finding for latent TB infection (LTBI) in foreign-national prisoners.
References
- PHE website (August 2017). Prison health: health and justice annual report.
- MoJ and HM Prison and Probation Service (November 2016). White Paper on Prison Safety and Reform.
WHO consultation on innovative PPE for frontline HCWs
The WHO has published a consultation document containing draft preferred product characteristics for PPE for frontline healthcare workers responding viral haemorrhagic fever outbreaks in tropical climates [1].
During the 2014-2016 Ebola virus epidemic in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, inappropriate use of, or lack of, personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers at the frontline was found to have been a significant root cause of infection among HCWs, who were found to have been at 21-32 times greater risk than the general population.
Technical advisory committees from WHO, UNICEF, MSF, USAID, ECDC and other organisations have since been working towards defining an innovative product that could better protect HCWs in such situations, ie those working in hot and humid conditions in low and medium resource countries.
In the draft preferred product characteristics now circulated (for the benefit of institutions and organisations involved in the use, design or management of PPE), a total of 10 characteristics for ‘ideal PPE’ are being put forward, aimed at: improving user comfort; facilitating “donning and doffing”; facilitating communication (oral, aural and visual); etc.
The consultation is open from 6 to 28 September 2017.
Reference
Infection report in this issue of HPR
The following infection report is published in this issue of HPR.