News
Department of Wealth...
Other recent news articles Something for Weekend Radio 13/12/2006 Tainted Blood 16/10/2006 Conferences and Kaletra 15/9/2006 Department of Wealth... 14/8/2006 On Tipranavir - be careful it might kill you! 12/7/2006
| Other recent news articles | |
| Something for Weekend Radio | 13/12/2006 |
| Tainted Blood | 16/10/2006 |
| Conferences and Kaletra | 15/9/2006 |
| Department of Wealth... | 14/8/2006 |
| On Tipranavir - be careful it might kill you! | 12/7/2006 |
Created: 22:07, 14/8/2006
The Department of Health has been busy this past month. They may all be on holiday in August but July saw the release of 2 bits of information about our treatment and care. They wrote to Chief executives asking them to make details of their contracts for buying clotting factors available to them, things like when does the contract end and how much are you paying. This is the so that they can move to national commissioning with the hope that it will cost less. The DH guess that of the current £200 million pounds the NHS spends on blood clotting treatments it might be £18 million cheaper by buying in bulk. Be nice if they took some of these 'savings' and used it to pay for services but I expect to disappear into deficits. The Haemophilia Society has a piece from the DH on their website here gives the details.
The letter to Chief big-wigs in the NHS is also on the DH website here
You can also email them with comments to clottingfactors@dh.gsi.gov
Earlier in the month details about the AIDS support grant for next year were also posted . This is money given to local authorities to spend on social care of people with HIV. They can either spend it on their own services or contract voluntary groups to provide services. Now the paper is really boring with details about how councils can apply but it does give some of the figures awarded to councils this year. Most of the London Boroughs got significant sums of money, hundreds of thousands of pounds, and Brighton a big chunk (£307,000) which is hardly surprising as the services in these places probably see the most people. The places getting very little are much more interesting though. I know Rutland is a small council and has nothing about HIV on its website but I wonder how they spend the £2000 they get allocated. Even more surprising is that Hartlepool only gets £2000 for the year as well. That's about tuppence per person in the town, not enough to buy 350 packets of Durex Extra Safe from Boots or 2650 copies of "Below the Belt" from THT to help the men of Hartlepool keep their penis and testicles healthy. Maybe they could spend it on copies of Positive Nation for 80 organisations or sign up 110 people to the Haemophilia Society as full members. Perhaps the best would be to update their website since it says the services they offer adults with HIV is to "work with families where a child is HIV positive". And finally I would not recommend going to the Isles of Scilly on your holidays if you are not feeling well, they get nothing.