Janet:
First Minister, as part of the inquiry work taking place here in Wales, could you provide some clarity, perhaps, as to when pharmaceutical professionals in Wales could be expected to administer the trialled recombinant, laboratory-made factor products such as Fc-fusion, PEGylation and albumin fusion, and also advise what work this Government is doing with patients here in Wales in terms of communication as to how these drugs might actually make a big difference to their lives going forward?
First Minister:
Well, Llywydd, on 6 March, my colleague Vaughan Gething provided a written statement to the Assembly, setting out a fair and comprehensive package of additional support for families and individuals here in Wales. We believe that that went some way to meeting the concerns of those families. I'm happy to write to the Member on the specific question of when pharmaceutical professionals will be able to administer new forms of drug therapy, but we have been talking in this question about something more fundamental than that. We've been talking about financial support to people who have been infected by a failure on the part of the national health service nearly 40 years ago that will allow them to live decent lives at this point in their life cycle, and, while there are other things that we want to do, that fundamental issue deserves to be tackled right across this Chamber.
