| The organisation is planning to carry out around 5000 tests a year for the infection which can be passed on by a person who may have no symptoms and be unaware they are infected.
But the consequences of infection can be catastrophic, particularly for women, who can lose their ability to have children.
“Somewhere in the region of one in 10 young people under the age of 25 may be infected with chlamydia,” said Ann Pearson, NHS Tayside’s head of social inclusion, who led work to produce the health authority’s sexual health strategy, quoting national estimates of the incidence of the infection.
“We don’t know what the actual situation is in Tayside but it would be reasonable to assume that is what we may be dealing with.
“For us to control it (the spread of chlamydia), we do need to be screening more people and treating them, as well as tackling the underlying issues.”
Ms Pearson said encouraging people to practise safer sex had a “huge emphasis” in the sexual health strategy and was very important in controlling the spread of chlamydia and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
A “local delivery plan” that set out how NHS Tayside intended to deliver services to improve sexual health over the next three years was approved last week. The plans included extending the availability of chlamydia screening as part of the wide-ranging bid to tackle STIs, improve sexual health and underline the importance of strong relationships.
For some years there has been a desire to make testing more readily available for people who, because they may be completely unaware they are infected with chlamydia, don’t seek out specialist help in hospitals and go on to infect sexual partners. Now the health authority is to take on extra staff and offer testing in a variety of community settings and “drop-in centres” where people attend for a variety of reasons and that don’t have the stigma of turning up at a specialist clinic.
“People go in to drop-in centres for lots of reasons but where a sexual history has been taken and someone is thought to be at risk, then they would be offered testing,” said Ms Pearson.
“For most people chlamydia is asymptomatic and that does create problems. It has quite serious consequences for people, particularly for women, in terms of infertility.”
She explained that at the moment chlamydia testing was available in family doctors’ surgeries and in the genito urinary medicine (GUM) clinics at Dundee’s Ninewells Hospital and at Perth Royal Infirmary. Sometimes family planning clinics did offer screening but did not offer treatment.
Under the plans approved last week family planning staff will work far more closely with GUM clinics and Ms Pearson said it would be “more of a one-stop service”. |
