£300m to modernise sexual health services in UK
Nov 27, 2004 - 5:50:00 AM
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By Ashwin, UK Correspondent,
[RxPG] A new £300 million programme over three years, to modernise and transform sexual health services in England, was announced today by Health Secretary, John Reid.
The extra funding will include a £50m advertising campaign to tackle the rise in sexually transmitted infections (STI's).
As new figures, published today from the Health Protection Agency, disclose a worrying rise in STI's, including a 8 per cent rise in chlamydia infections over the past year, John Reid said:
"Sexually transmitted infections have been rising steadily over the past few years. Rates have virtually trebled among men and women over the last 10 years. Prevention messages are not getting through.
"We need to act now on sexual health and make it a priority.
"We will run an advertising campaign, the biggest on sexual health in twenty years, which tells people, especially young people, of the consequences of irresponsible sexual behaviour and of sexually transmitted infections.
"Chlamydia is a particular worry, as it has no symptoms in many cases, but can lead to infertility in later life if it is not diagnosed and treated."
The Public Health White Paper, published last week, set out further action on chlamydia, including the fast tracking of the national screening programme and also piloting screening in areas not traditionally used, such as pharmacies. The programme will cover the whole of England by March 2007. And with this comes a further £80m to help achieve this goal.
There will also be a focus on modernising genito urinary medicine (GUM) clinics, with an injection of a further £130m over 3 years, and upgrading prevention services such as contraceptive services with another £40m put toward this.
We will also track progress on GUM waiting times so that we can ensure that by 2008 patients will be offered an appointment for GUM services within 48 hours.
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