Jim Shannon – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Shannon on 2015-12-15.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that people with both TB and HIV receive joined-up care.

Jane Ellison

The Department recognises that joined up care for people with tuberculosis (TB) and HIV, as with other areas of comorbidity or coinfection management, is important. In NHS England’s specialised services, service specifications exist for HIV and for infectious diseases and both make reference to the importance of referral pathways and network arrangements to meet the needs of patients.

Separate to NHS England’s commissioning of joined up care for people with TB and HIV, treatment and care services for co-infected sufferers take account of the reference guideline, “British HIV Association guidelines for the treatment of TB/HIV coinfection 2011”, which recommends that patients with both HIV and TB are managed by a multidisciplinary team with expertise in both TB and HIV. A link to this guideline is at:

http://www.bhiva.org/documents/Guidelines/TB/hiv_954_online_final.pdf

The role of a TB specialist nurse and multidisciplinary team is essential in the management of co-infected patients.

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