I'd never proudly admit that I am a nurse, as I'm treated like someone who couldn't get a proper degree"
Chlamydia screening programme fails to hit target
A programme that checks young people for the STD chlamydia is failing to hit its targets, figures show.
The National Chlamydia Screening Programme aimed to test 17% of 15 to 24-year-olds in England for chlamydia between April 2008 and March 2009, but only managed 15.9%.
Half of the 10 strategic health authorities in the country failed to reach the target for screening for the STI. These were East Midlands, East of England, South East Coast, South Central, and West Midlands.
London saw the greatest number of young people screened - at 18.1% - while just 12.3% had tests in the South East Coast region.
Community contraceptive clinics, some further education colleges, and more recently postal testing kits and pharmacies have all facilitated testing since the National Chlamydia Screening Programme started to be phased in around April of 2003.
More than 750,000 young people were screened under the programme last year with a further 305,000 undergoing tests not directly related to the programme, such as at GP surgeries.
The figures released do not include testing carried out in GUM sexual health clinics.
Overall, an average of 7.3% of those screened under the programme tested positive.
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Readers' comments (2)
Anonymous | 15-Jun-2009 1:12 pm
Being 19, and therefore in the age category for the screening programme I was not surprised when I received a screening kit in the post. BUT what I was surprised about was the letter sent with the screening kit opening with "Congratulations".
Personally, I found this quite insulting - it was as if screening for chlamydia was some sort of game, which clearly it is not.
I really do hope that the authority behind the screening programme didn't mean for the process to come accross this way as I don't think that young people would feel screening themselves for chlamydia as a task to be congratulated over.
Having a placement at a family planning clinic made me realise how scary young people can find this and when asking the nurses working at the clinic their opinion they were very much against the whole idea of the postal screening kits.
I think more thought should have gone into this esepcially when the generalisation was made that every young person would actually need a chlamydia test kit sent through the post - from a nursing student point of view I believe that the authorities clearly have no trust in most of the young people today.
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Anonymous | 15-Jun-2009 6:41 pm
My daughter, aged 22 participated in the Chlamydia Screening programme the week before the Easter Bank Holidays, which was nearly 10 weeks ago and has still not had any letter of response back regarding her results. Surely if a programme like this is to be successful, there should be some system in place to ensure that results are speedily sent out to the participants.
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