Clwyd West Assembly Member Darren Millar has called on the Cabinet Secretary for Health to ensure that skin camouflage services are available on the Welsh NHS.
There are currently no arrangements in place for NHS provision of these services and people who have been left with facial disfigurement following illness or accident are having to pay for them themselves.
Darren has written to the Health Secretary, Vaughan Gethin AM, after raising the matter in the Assembly Chamber yesterday, urging him to take action to address the situation.
His letter states:
“Given the importance of skin camouflage services in terms of building self-confidence and promoting independence for those with skin conditions and those who have been left with facial disfigurement following illness or accident, I am concerned that there are currently no arrangements in place for NHS provision of these services to my constituents and others in Wales.
“I would therefore be most grateful if you could investigate this matter and take any action necessary to ensure that patients from Wales are able to access NHS funded skin camouflage services in the future.”
Skin camouflage services were provided in Wales, by an organisation called Changing Faces, but it has withdrawn its services from both Wales and Northern Ireland because it's been unable to come up with funding arrangements to continue them, because of the different ways that the NHS approaches these services here.
Calling for a Welsh Government Statement on the matter in this week’s Business Statement, Darren said:
“The fact that these services are no longer available is a cause of great concern for a number of people in my own constituency who've benefited from these services in the past. There's currently no service available other than for them to pay privately in order to access skin camouflage services. I would be grateful if there could be a statement on this, as I'm sure that the Welsh Government would not want people to be in that position.”