Current Facts

There are approximately 150,000 NHS staff in Scotland for a population of 5,057,400

• Population of Scotland
• NHS

1,390 Scots don't turn up for hospital appointments every single day, costing the NHS millions of pounds.

The Scottish Government is set to spend £54 million over the next three years in a raft of measures to combat hospital infections, including increased monitoring of hand hygiene compliance.

Coronary heart disease is the second biggest killer in Scotland after cancer – in 2005, 10,331 people died from it.

There were 1.55 million A&E visits in Scotland in 2006/2007 – a significant 50,000 rise on the previous year.

There are 178,929 registered blood donors in Scotland – 6% of the total population. (Including 34,916 new donors last year.)

Smoking is the most important preventable cause of ill-health and premature death in Scotland.  Every year there are more than 13,000 smoking-related deaths.

The birth rate in Scotland is at its healthiest for 20 years, with 57,000 births registered in 2007 – the highest in 20 years.

One in four people in Scotland will experience mental health problems at some stage in their life. The most common mental health problems include depression and related stress and anxiety, schizophrenia and dementia.

Last year around 12,000 hip and knee replacement operations were carried out in Scotland. Joint replacement produces some of the largest improvements in the quality of life for patients.

The world's first dram-powered hospital is Caithness General in Wick. It is part of an innovative community project using waste heat from the Pulteney Distillery piped into homes and other premises.

The NHS also reflects social attitudes of the decades. In 1948 only one in twenty births were to unmarried parents. It stayed at that level for nearly 30 years. By 1988 it had risen to almost a quarter and continued to rise. Last year almost half of all births were to unmarried parents.