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The Scottish Government have regular monthly engagement with the UK Government regarding the management of medicines shortages, including hormone replacement therapy supply issues.

The decision to increase charges at the 4 stations which are staffed during opening hours was a commercial decision taken by ScotRail. The remaining 91 stations which have toilet facilities remain free. Toilets are available on all trains serving these stations.

The gender breakdown of graduate apprenticeship starts for 2017-18 and 2018-19 can be found below:

Through research, Health Scotland have identified perceived barriers to vaccination for those ‘vaccine hesitators’ in key priority groups. The public awareness campaign for this coming season (2019-20) aims to challenge those misconceptions and offer reassurance with the aim of supporting increased uptake.

The annual Chief Medical Officer letter will also emphasise that the benefits of flu vaccination should be communicated and vaccination made as easily accessible as possible for eligible groups. The letter will also urge Health Boards and GPs to ensure resources are aligned to help support good uptake rates.

Skills Development Scotland published a detailed report on Graduate Apprenticeships on Wednesday 14 August 2019. The report can be found here: http://www.skillsdevelopmentscotland.co.uk/media/45882/ga-report-2019.pdf

Organisations delivering services are responsible for implementing the standards at a local level, and local quality frameworks and procedures will assist them in monitoring progress.

As part of the draft National Action Plan, we have included a commitment to promote and support the implementation of the Healthcare Improvement Scotland General Standards for Neurological Care and Support 2018.

In developing the National Action Plan (on Neurological Conditions) we are actively considering national governance arrangements, which will include intelligence gathered on implementation of the HIS standards.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-24616 on 21 August 2019. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

We are closely monitoring the current flu season in Australia and will use any transferrable evidence and learning from Australia to strengthen approaches for Scotland.

While evaluating the Southern Hemisphere’s flu season is useful for our own planning it does not necessarily mean that the Northern Hemisphere will experience the same flu season next winter.

The best way for people to defend themselves from the flu is to be vaccinated. A new flu campaign for the 2019-20 Scottish season will launch in Autumn and work is underway to ensure effective planning is in place.

The Scottish Government, through its Modern Outpatient Programme, has been working closely with Crohn’s and Colitis UK, NHS Scotland and other partners in recent years to improve Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) services and pathways across Scotland.

The Modern Outpatient Programme is actively working on new models of care where clinically appropriate patients may be seen by pharmacists, dieticians or nurse specialists. This allows us to provide care to people closer at home. This can be significantly beneficial to people with IBD who do not have to travel so far.

This work is being done in partnership with Crohn’s and Colitis UK to ensure that our proposed models are fully patient centred and will meet the needs of patients.

At national level, we are working closely with NHS Boards to further develop the capacity to model and scenario plan the health and social care workforce in response to a range of service challenges;

Key to this is the development and implementation by NHS Education for Scotland of the Turas data intelligence platform, enabling workforce information across health and social care to be combined. The platform went live 1st of April 2019.

The Scottish Government continues to invest in the medical workforce, and as at March 2019 the number of consultants working in NHS Scotland is at a record high.

The information requested on how many peripheral nerve experts there have been in each of the last 10 years, broken down by NHS board is not centrally available.

Staff in other professions (such as neurology consultants, physiotherapists and general physicians) will contribute towards peripheral nerve expert care.

The number of Neurology Consultants working in NHSScotland can be found in the Medical and Dental dashboard on the ISD website available here:

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Workforce/Publications/2019-06-04/Medical-and-Dental.asp

The number of physiotherapists working in NHSScotland can be found in the Allied Health Professions dashboard on the ISD website available here:

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Workforce/Publications/2019-06-04/AHP.asp

A general physician is also a general practitioner. Information on the general practice workforce including population and list sizes can be found on the ISD website available here:

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/General-Practice/Workforce-and-Practice-Populations/

Further notes:

Further information on the statistics, including information on how the data are collected and notes to aid interpretation, is given in the 'FAQs' section of the Workforce Statistics website at http://www.isdscotland.org/workforce/ .