BPSU aims

The BPSU aims to:

• facilitate research into uncommon childhood infections and disorders for the advancement of knowledge and the improvement of treatment, prevention and service planning.

• allow paediatricians to participate in the surveillance of rare conditions of public health importance; to increase awareness and knowledge within the medical profession of the less common disorders studied.

• respond rapidly to public health emergencies. The Unit meets these aims by providing a nationwide case ascertainment service to research workers in paediatrics and related fields through its active case reporting scheme.

This system lessens the burden on reporting doctors of requests from numerous different sources for reporting cases of uncommon disorders. Supplementary activities of the Unit include providing advice and assistance where appropriate to research workers on the design of their studies, involvement in international surveillance of rare disease.

The BPSU has not, however, undertaken to provide a continuing national registry of rare diseases unlinked to specific surveillance projects.

BPSU Evaluation

The BPSU undertook an internal evaluation on 2008. A summery of the evaluation findings can now be downloaded

The Full report can also be downloaded (500kb)