Barry Sheerman – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Barry Sheerman on 2015-10-09.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what his policy is on providing Group B strep tests for new-born babies.

Ben Gummer

Routine testing of babies for Group B Streptococcus (GBS) infection is not recommended. Therefore, no cost benefit assessment has been made by the Department on providing GBS tests to newborn babies.

A search of the Department’s Ministerial correspondence database has identified 41 items of correspondence received since 1 January 2015 on GBS. This correspondence relates mainly to offering testing for GBS carriage in pregnancy.

If a woman has previously had a baby with GBS, her maternity team will either monitor the health of her newborn baby closely for at least 12 hours after birth, or treat them with antibiotics until blood tests confirm whether or not GBS is present. The Department’s policy is not to offer antenatal screening for GBS carriage. This is based on advice from the UK National Screening Committee the body responsible for advising Ministers and the National Health Service in all four countries about all aspects of screening policy, and their advice is because there is insufficient evidence to demonstrate that the benefits to be gained from screening would outweigh the harms.