Tuberculosis data by local authority and place of birth

The request was refused by Health Protection Agency.

Dear Health Protection Agency,

Under the Freedom of Information Act, using the data which you hold I ask you to provide Enhanced Enhanced Tuberculosis Surveillance (ETS) data for the rate of TB case reports for each local authority, subdivided by place of birth (UK, non-UK).

Please report the average number and the average rate per 100,000.

As you already hold this data in other spreadsheets this should not be difficult to put together: http://www.hpa.org.uk/web/HPAweb&Pag...

From the data which you have published in the aforementioned weblink, would you also clarify that the average numbers and average rates are averaged per year or are totals for the three calander years for the entire local authority. I specifically refer to the data in Table 3a (Three-year average tuberculosis case reports and rates by local authority, England, 2000-2010).

Yours faithfully,

Charlie Faulknor

Freedom Of Information, Health Protection Agency

Dear Mr Faulknor

 

The Health Protection Agency acknowledges your request for information.

 

You will receive a response within 20 working days.

 

Regards

 

Gloria Akinyemi

 

 

 

 

 

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Freedom Of Information, Health Protection Agency

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  • Attachment

    case ref 352 Request for TB data by local authority and place of birth.pdf

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Dear Mr Faulknor

 

Please find attached the Health Protection Agency’s response to your
request for information.

      

Kind regards

 

Gloria Akinyemi

 

 

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Dear Gloria Akinyemi,

Thank you for your prompt but unsatisfactory response. The question can be easily answered from which the data you hold.

Under the Freedom of Information Act I therefore request the anonymised raw data from which you derive the ETS reports.

Yours sincerely,

Charlie Faulknor

Freedom Of Information, Health Protection Agency

Dear Mr Faulknor

 

The Health Protection Agency acknowledges your request for information.

 

You will receive a response within 20 working days.

 

Regards

 

Gloria Akinyemi

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Freedom Of Information, Health Protection Agency

1 Attachment

  • Attachment

    case ref 371 Request for information regarding TB surveillance report.pdf

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Dear Mr Faulknor

Please find attached the Health Protection Agency's response to your request for information.

Kind regards

Gloria Akinyemi

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Dear Gloria Akinyemi,

I reserve the right to clarify my request, based on your response.

The reason for your rejection was because you thought the information would include personal information. My request was for anonymised data. To help me clarify my request, I therefore ask you the following:

1 - what data fields do you collect on each individual TB case.

2 - what data fields do you hold that are calculated/filled on the basis of information supplied to you (for instance, you are given date of birth, but you reports give data for age ranges; and you are given postcodes but your reports quote primary care trusts and regions).

3 - do you hold any other linked data which is collected by other means? If so, please detail.

Yours sincerely,

Charlie Faulknor

Freedom Of Information, Health Protection Agency

Dear Mr Faulknor

The Health Protection Agency acknowledges your request for information. You will receive a response within 20 working days.

Kind regards

Freedom of Information Officer

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Freedom Of Information, Health Protection Agency

2 Attachments

Dear Mr Faulknor

Please find attached the Health Protection Agency's response to your request for information.

Kind regards

Freedom of Information Officer

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Dear Freedom Of Information,

By law, you should have responded by the 3rd of December, 2012. You are now in breach of the Freedom of Information Act. Please Respond promptly before I escalate this enquiry.

Yours sincerely,

Charlie Faulknor

Charlie Faulknor left an annotation ()

simultaneous e-mails!

Dear Freedom Of Information,

Please ignore my previous e-mail asking for you to respond promptly - it seems our e-mails went out simultaneously.

Thank you kindly for listing the variables collected through national TB surveillance. You previously refused a request of mine as you believed this information "would lead to the identification of members of the public through deductive disclosure." I have attached this list below and would like you to clarify which of the below information you consider to be personal. In my opinion, only (1) and (7) are personal information with the rest being generic non-personal information.

(1) Unique identification number.
(2) The person who enters the case (nurse, HPU admin staff)
(3) Hospital
(4) Date of case report
(5) Age and sex of the case
(6) Residence of the case
(7) Occupation of the case
(8) Ethnic group of the case
(9) Place of birth (UK- or non-UK-born) of the case
(10) Year case entered the UK if non-UK-born
(11) Date of onset of symptoms, start of treatment, diagnosis
(12) Site of disease
(13) Sputum-smear results
(14) Confirmation of the diagnosis (e.g. by microscopy, histology, PCR, culture)
(15) Species of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex
(16) Drug resistance profile
(17) Previous diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis
(18) BCG vaccination and year received
(19) History of or current problem drug use, alcohol misuse, homelessness, imprisonment
(20) Details on the TB Treatment
(21) Directly observed treatment in-patient stay in hospital
(22) Culture conversion
(23) Treatment outcome
(24) If applicable - which molecular cluster is this patient part of

Yours sincerely,

Charlie Faulknor

Freedom Of Information, Health Protection Agency

Dear Mr Faulknor

Thank you for your email dated 4 December 2012.

You are correct that not all the data fields listed below can be defined as personal data as defined by the Data Protection Act 1998.
We omitted to clearly explain that the HPA is committed to preventing the deductive disclosure of individuals which can be achieved through linking a range of the below fields. For example, if we release case ages and hospital name it maybe easy to identify patients at either end of the age spectrum. Accordingly, the response you received should have clarified this point.

Kind regards

Leigh Hopkins

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Dear Freedom Of Information,

Thank you for your reply. I therefore request the below-listed datafields for each case listed on the Enhanced Tuberculosis Surveillance database - you provided 24 datafields in a previous request, I number them for your convenience.

Should you consider a particular datafield to possibly cause deductive disclosure of an individual please detail all combinations which you suppose to be of issue. Should there be any further issue with supplying this information please detail. I reserve the right to clarify my request.

(1) NOT REQUIRED
(2) NOT REQUIRED
(3) NOT REQUIRED
(4) Date of case report
(5) Age and sex of the case
(6) Residence of the case
(7) NOT REQUIRED
(8) Ethnic group of the case
(9) Place of birth (UK- or non-UK-born) of the case
(10) Year case entered the UK if non-UK-born
(11) Date of onset of symptoms, start of treatment, diagnosis
(12) Site of disease
(13) Sputum-smear results
(14) Confirmation of the diagnosis (e.g. by microscopy, histology,
PCR, culture)
(15) Species of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex
(16) Drug resistance profile
(17) Previous diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis
(18) BCG vaccination and year received
(19) NOT REQUIRED
(20) Details on the TB Treatment
(21) Directly observed treatment in-patient stay in hospital
(22) Culture conversion
(23) Treatment outcome
(24) If applicable - which molecular cluster is this patient part
of

Should any of the above data be coded I also ask for the codes to be explained.

Yours sincerely,

Charlie Faulknor

Freedom Of Information, Health Protection Agency

Dear Mr Faulknor

The Health Protection Agency acknowledges your request.

You will receive a response within 20 working days.

Kind regards

Freedom of Information Officer

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Dear Freedom Of Information,

You have not replied in a timely fashion. By law you should have responded by the 25th of January 2013.

Yours sincerely,

Charlie Faulknor

Freedom Of Information, Health Protection Agency

I will look into this and reissue your response.

Apologies for the convenience.

Kind regards

FOI Officer

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Freedom Of Information, Health Protection Agency

1 Attachment

  • Attachment

    case ref 460 Request for detailed TB surveillance content held within 19 datafields.pdf

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Dear Mr Faulknor

I apologise for the delay in a response.

Please find attached the Health Protection Agency's response to your request for information.

Kind regards

Freedom of Information Officer

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Freedom Of Information, Health Protection Agency

2 Attachments

  • Attachment

    RE Case ref 460 Request for information regarding Tuberculosis surveillance report.txt

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  • Attachment

    case ref 460 Request for detailed TB surveillance content held within 19 datafields.pdf

    87K Download View as HTML

Dear Mr Faulknor

The Health Protection Agency apologised for the slight delay in response to your request. The response letter you received was 4 working days overdue. I apologise again.

Kind regards

Freedom of Information officer

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[Name Removed] (Account suspended) left an annotation ()

How disgraceful to lament the time and resource you've spent in correspondance. You have wasted time side stepping the request.What a waste of tax payers money.