Health services

Tender description

Public Health England (PHE) is planning to award provision of clinical advice services related to the Imported Fever to University College Hospital London (UCLH) and the Royal Liverpool Hospital Trust (RLUBHT). The Imported Fever Service (IFS) is a national helpline and advice service providing access to urgent laboratory testing for clinicians dealing with patients who may have an unusual infection acquired abroad, including dangerous Viral Haemorrhagic Fevers (VHF, e.g. Ebola and Lassa fever) and other high consequence infectious diseases. The service is led by Public Health England (PHE) Rare and Imported Pathogens Laboratory (RIPL) in partnership with University College Hospital London (UCLH) and the Royal Liverpool Hospital Trust (RLUBHT). The IFS is accessed through a single national number and operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for the advice line, also providing 24/7 laboratory testing when required by the patient’s condition. The IFS appears in the UK national algorithms as the starting point for investigation of potential VHF cases. The partner NHS Trusts support the service by providing additional expertise as the range of possible diagnoses is extremely wide, and by acting as a second on-call person Out-of-Hours so that the telephone line is always manned by one clinician from RIPL and one clinician from UCLH or Liverpool, rotating weekly. UCLH and RLUBHT are the principal centres for treating tropical diseases in the UK with a wide experience in the management and treatment of tropical diseases, including the only dedicated Consultant Parasitologist and Leprologist working within the UK. The service will also include a weekly national teleconference in which problem cases from across the UK are discussed. UCLH also operates the UK’s largest parasitology laboratory and the IFS benefits from this link for some of the more unusual tropical diseases caused by protozoa, ranging from malaria to trypanosomiasis.