Headquarters Surgeon General
DMS Whittington Barracks Coltman House
LICHFIELD
WS14 9PY
Mr John
Your Reference: 86442-ad9b722f
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx
Our Reference:20111013-FOI_John_Epipen-U
Date: 13 October 2011
Dear Mr John,
Your correspondence dated 18 September 2011 has been considered to be a request for
information in accordance with the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act 2000. You
requested the following information:
•
How many service personnel are actually serving in HM Forces that have been
issued with Epipens and have suffered anaphylactic shocks whilst in service.
In line with NHS-IC protocol, prescribing data is released separately to diagnostic data.
As a result, the response below does not link prescription to diagnosis by patient and so
each element should be considered in isolation (see note b).
As at 1 September 20011, there were 189,300 Armed Forces personnel (Regular Forces
and full time UK Non-Regular Forces, but excluding mobilised Reservists) of which; 188
Service Personnel have been identified as having a read code of “Anaphylactic Shock”
on the Ministry of Defence Primary Healthcare Reporting System (Defence Medical
Information Capability Programme (DMICP)), and 653 Service Personnel have been
identified as having been prescribed either an “Epipen” or an “Anapen” on DMICP.
Please note the following:
a. The data presented has been taken from the DMICP data warehouse and has
not been validated against individual patient records, so should be regarded as
provisional.
b. Prescribing data can not be directly linked to the number of patients or the
conditions for which the drugs were prescribed.
c. 625 UK Armed Forces personnel do not have a DMICP record and therefore
have not been included in the search for this data. To manually search records
would lead to disproportionate costs.
d. If diagnostic information relating to Anaphylactic shock is entered as free text
within the medical record on DMICP (rather than entering its code), it will not be
included in the figures presented.
If you are not satisfied with this response or you wish to complain about any aspect of
the handling of your request, then you should contact me in the first instance. If informal
resolution is not possible and you are still dissatisfied then you may apply for an
independent internal review by contacting the Head of Corporate Information, 2nd Floor,
MOD Main Building, Whitehall, SW1A 2HB (e-mail xxxxxxxxxx@xxx.xx). Please note
that any request for an internal review must be made within 40 working days of the date
on which the attempt to reach informal resolution has come to an end.
If you remain dissatisfied following an internal review, you may take your complaint to the
Information Commissioner under the provisions of Section 50 of the Freedom of
Information Act. Please note that the Information Commissioner will not investigate your
case until the MOD internal review process has been completed. Further details of the
role and powers of the Information Commissioner can be found on the Commissioner's
website, http://www.ico.gov.uk.
Yours sincerely,
HQ Surgeon General Secretariat