Originally published October 14 2005
Sex health clinics are overwhelmed in the UK
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Some have referred to the overwhelming of sex health clinics in Britain as a public health crisis, as 25 percent of clinics cannot book patients seeking urgent care within 48 hours.
Britain in sexual health 'crisis' A quarter of UK sex health clinics cannot treat patients needing urgent help within the recommended 48 hours, the BBC's Panorama programme has found.
The Department of Health said more needed to be done, and it was investing �300m over the next three years.
Panorama said its investigation revealed the scale of the sexually-transmitted infection (STI) epidemic in the UK, and showed a nation where sexual health is in rapid decline, due to big increases in the infection rates for some of the most common STIs.
It also said it shows how the rate of infection is overwhelming our sexual health service.
In the last decade, recorded cases of gonorrhoea and HIV have more than doubled and syphilis is up 1500%.
The programme found 27% of clinics could not treat a patient reporting serious symptoms of an STI within 48 hours.
The programme follows the story of several patients seeking treatment for STIs, including 24-year-old Sian, who developed chlamydia over two years ago and has been struggling to get pregnant ever since.
The Panorama team followed her in to the operating theatre where her surgeon, Professor Bill Ledger, discovers that her fallopian tubes were blocked.
The report comes as the government is due to unveil a �50m advertising campaign - the biggest sexual health campaign since the 1980s - in the next few months warning of the dangers of unsafe sex.
A Department of Health spokeswoman said the government was unsure how the survey had been conducted and whether it had been independently verified.
But she added: "We accept that a lot more needs to be done to reach our goal of offering everyone who needs one an appointment within 48 hours.
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