To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much money his Department has spent in each of the last 10 years and how much it estimates it will spend in the current year and each of the next three years on research (a) into the risk of transmission of the BSE agent from cattle to (i) humans and (ii) other primates, (b) into an early diagnostic test for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and (c) effective treatment for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. [6188]
The main agency through which the Government support biomedical and clinical research is the Medical Research Council. The MRC is an independent body which receives its grant in aid from the office of my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade. For information on the amount spent by the MRC on research, I refer the hon. Member to the reply that my hon. Friend the Minister for Science and Technology gave him on 18 December at columns 863–64.
The Department of Health has recently funded a series of studies, at the Institute for Animal Health, Edinburgh, into time-temperatures combinations required to inactivate BSE and related agents. Total expenditure on the studies was £340,000.
The Department of Health and the Scottish Office jointly fund the National CJD surveillance unit in Edinburgh. Set up in 1990, the unit monitors and investigates the epidemiology of the disease, paying particular attention to occupation and eating habits, so that any change in the pattern of CJD following the advent of
DH Funding of Surveillance of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease
| ||||||||||
£ Thousand
| ||||||||||
Year
| 1990–91
| 1991–92
| 1992–93
| 1993–94
| 1994–95
| 1995–96
| 1996–97
| 1997–98
| 1998–99
| Total
|
| Surveillance | 80 | 79 | 89 | 99 | 105 | 149 | 169 | 131 | 9 | 910 |
| Neuropathology | 154 | 102 | 59 | 62 | 74 | 114 | 122 | 126 | 129 | 942 |
| Total | 234 | 181 | 148 | 161 | 179 | 263 | 291 | 257 | 138 | 1,852 |
Notes: