Overview
- Health Secretary Wes Streeting confirmed Wednesday that the in‑service evaluation will start in October 2026 instead of January 2027 after campaigning by Jesy Nelson and SMA UK.
- The pilot will use the newborn heel‑prick blood spot test to screen about 400,000 babies in England for spinal muscular atrophy.
- Roughly 163,000 newborns will not be tested so they can serve as a control group, a plan some experts have criticised as unethical.
- Streeting said officials are working on how to widen coverage in England, while Scotland is moving to universal screening and Wales and Northern Ireland have not adopted screening.
- NIHR is funding the study to assess delivery speed and accuracy so babies can start NHS treatments earlier, which help most when given at or near birth and cannot reverse nerve damage already done.