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Information on vacancies in NHSScotland is published on the Scottish Health Statistics website under workforce statistics, at www.isdscotland.org/workforce.Information on vacancies for nursing staff is published in table 10 in SectionE (Nursing and Midwifery Staff) for each year since 2001. Figures are presentedas vacancy rates and whole-time equivalent number of vacancies. Whole-timeequivalent adjusts headcount staff figures to take account of part-time staff.Latest available figures are at 31 March 2004.

As far as I am aware, no NHSScotland waiting lists have been closed in the last year.

In December 2001, the Chief Executive of NHSScotland and the Chief Medical Officer issued guidance to the Health Service in Scotland instructing NHS Chief Executives to ensure that no patient who has been referred for assessment or treatment is refused admission to an appropriate waiting list.

It is for the Scottish Ambulance Service to determine how best to deploy its ambulance resources to achieve the response time standards agreed with the Scottish Executive. The Ambulance Service constantly monitors its performance to ensure that resources meet demand.

The information requested is provided in the following table.

Number of People Registered with an NHS General Dental Practitioner; 30 June 2004

Health Board Area	Children	Adults	Total
Argyll and Clyde	58,298	162,278	220,576
Ayrshire and Arran	54,476	147,077	201,553
Borders	13,579	37,617	51,196
Dumfries and Galloway	19,248	45,136	64,384
Fife	47,146	137,840	184,986
Forth Valley	41,707	105,993	147,700
Grampian	66,014	159,886	225,900
Greater Glasgow	128,782	356,699	485,481
Highland	27,813	47,705	75,518
Lanarkshire	75,828	204,568	280,396
Lothian	112,422	310,444	422,866
Orkney	1,298	3,700	4,998
Shetland	3,074	7,248	10,322
Tayside	59,324	171,470	230,794
Western Isles	1,638	9,058	10,696
Scotland	710,647	1,906,719	2,617,366

Source: MIDAS (Management Information and Dental Accounting System).

Evaluation results to date suggest no significant impact on accident and emergency cases in areas where NHS 24 is in operation.

The most recent information held on numbers of intensive care, cardiac care and high dependency unit beds, based on hospital returns to ISD (Scotland), is presented in the following table.

NHS Scotland - Average Available Staffed Beds in Intensive Care Units, Cardiac Care Units and High Dependency Units: Years Ending 31 March 2000-04

	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004P
Intensive Care Unit	162	164	165	171	172
Cardiac Care Unit	166	165	166	162	166
High Dependency Unit1	-	-	-	-	243

^PProvisional.

Source: ISD Scotland [Form ISD(S)1].

Note: 1. Identifiable from code introduced 1st April 2003.

The information requested is not available. It is not possible to identify from centrally collected data, the number of patients who have had their planned admissions to hospitals for in-patient or day-case treatment cancelled on more than one occasion.

Information is collected centrally only on the number of cancellations of planned admissions to hospital for inpatient and day case treatment. Figures for the last five years were provided in my answer to S2W-9291 on 10 August 2004. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/search_wa.

Between 1999 and 2003, three children, who were born in Scotland, were reported with a confirmed HIV infection, transmitted from mother to child. Two of these infections were reported in 2000 from NHS boards in the East of Scotland, while 1 was reported in 2003 from a West of Scotland NHS Board. To preserve patient confidentiality, the NHS boards concerned cannot be disclosed.

The information requested is not available centrally.

The information requested is not held centrally.