The National Antenatal Infection Screening Monitoring (NAISM) team in Public Health England’s National Infection Service (NIS) has published the 2015 annual summary report on antenatal screening for infectious diseases.
This report presents a summary of the uptake and test result data for antenatal screening for hepatitis B, HIV, syphilis, and rubella susceptibility in England in 2015.
The NHS Infectious Diseases in Pregnancy Screening (IDPS) Programme recommends screening to all pregnant women for hepatitis B, HIV and syphilis. Until April 2016, it also screened for rubella susceptibility.
Screening identifies women who have one of these infections. We can then offer them appropriate follow-on tests and treatments, substantially reducing the risk that they will pass on the infection to their babies.
In 2015, uptake of screening for all infections remained high (>97%) and the proportion of women with a positive test result for hepatitis B, HIV or syphilis remained stable.
This will be the last annual report of this type as the IDPS programme team is introducing a new data collection and reporting process for all screening data from April 2016 onwards.
New standards and process
Collecting and reporting data is important for assuring the quality of screening and supporting the work of the NIS in reducing sexually transmitted infections.
The IDPS programme introduced new screening standards in April 2016 to support health professionals and commissioners in providing a high quality screening programme. The revised standards include metrics that assess the screening pathway and help providers and commissioners identify where improvements are needed.
To measure performance against these standards, we are introducing a new data collection process that replaces the NAISM process. This will avoid duplication of requests and reduce the burden of data collection.
In April 2017, we will ask all antenatal and newborn screening co-ordinators for IDPS data for their local programmes from 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2017. We will send them templates via the regional screening quality assurance service (SQAS) teams and will ask them to return these completed templates by the end of June.
We will keep you updated about this important change via the blog.
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