Category: News
Date: 14.10.2005
Printable version
Panorama: Love Hurts (Sunday 16 October, 91Èȱ¬ ONE, 10.15pm) reveals the scale of the sexually transmitted infection epidemic in the UK, and how it is overwhelming our sexual health service.
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A survey for the programme finds that over a quarter of all sexual health clinics in the UK are currently unable to treat patients needing urgent attention within the recommended 48 hours.
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Some clinics are turning away new patients; most have closed down their walk-in services; and others are asking patients to wait up to two months for routine appointments.
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One of the most senior sexual health clinicians in the country, Professor George Kinghorn, tells Panorama that it amounts to a "public health crisis".
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In the next few months the Government is due to unveil a £50m advertising campaign warning of the dangers of unsafe sex - the biggest sexual health campaign since the portentous 1986 'Don't Die of Ignorance' initiative.
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Britain's sexual health is in rapid decline. In the last decade cases of gonorrhoea and HIV have more than doubled, syphilis is resurgent (up 1,500%), and the number of sexually active people under 25 infected with chlamydia is now thought to number just under half a million.
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With wide-ranging access to patients and staff at a GUM (Genito-Urinary Medicine) clinic in Sheffield, Panorama examines the extent of the crisis.
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Gill Bell, Britain's only nurse consultant in sexual health, explains how it has become "the survival of the fittest" trying to get seen.
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The programme also reveals how some clinics around the UK have now resorted to running restrictive appointment systems.
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Almost one in five now require people to ring during a narrow time window, making it a fight for appointments for some.
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Also revealed in the programme:
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Only 27% of clinics still offer some form of walk-in service available to all patients.
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Of those clinics able to offer a routine appointment when first contacted, only 20 (7%) could offer an appointment within the recommended 48 hours. (That figure does not include walk-in only clinics which will not allow the caller to make an advance appointment or the clinics who adopt the restrictive system outlined below).
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Almost one in five clinics (18%) operate a restrictive system where they have either stopped taking new patients or only offer a limited number of appointments available for booking at specific times of the week.
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The longest waiting time at any one clinic for a routine appointment in our survey was 65 days.
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The average waiting time at clinics for a routine appointment across the UK is 15 days - significantly above the Government's recommended 48 hours.
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27% of clinics could not treat a patient reporting serious symptoms of an STI within 48 hours. A few clinics actually refused to see patients with reported symptoms.
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30% of clinics could not see a patient whose partner was reported to have gonorrhoea within 48 hours.
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It took 18 attempts over three days to get through to one clinic when posing as a patient with symptoms. When the clinic finally answered, the receptionist promised that a health advisor would call back - they never did.
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One caller was kept on hold on the phone to another clinic for 26 minutes.
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Where walk-in services are offered, some are severely limited. One clinic explained that they can only see five to 10 people a day.
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Excerpts of secretly-recorded telephone conversations with Panorama's survey team
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CLINIC 1: Unfortunately I've got no appointments left for the next two weeks for new patients.
CALLER: I've got symptoms now but you can't take anyone?
CLINIC: No, we're not taking any new patients at the moment; we just haven't got the doctors in the clinic.
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CLINIC 2: The problem we have is that the clinics are full to almost over spilling.
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CLINIC 3: Unfortunately the first appointment I have is almost six weeks away. I know it's shocking.
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CLINIC 4: There's no provision for sexual health in London from Friday afternoon to Monday morning.
CALLER: Nowhere at all?
CLINIC: Nowhere. Nowhere. And if you think it's scandalous as I do write to your MP.
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CLINIC 5: The way our appointments system works is that you book on a Monday morning for the following week and they all went this Monday gone within about two hours of the phone line going on.
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CLINIC 6: I'm afraid the way we work is you have to ring us on a Tuesday morning, we open at nine and we book you in for the following week.
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Panorama also explores the human cost of this STI epidemic.
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It follows the story of several patients seeking treatment, including the case of 24-year-old Sian, who developed chlamydia over two years ago and has been struggling to get pregnant ever since.
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The programme follows her story in to the operating theatre when her surgeon, Professor Bill Ledger, discovers that her tubes are blocked with adhesions; and we are with her when she learns - just hours afterwards - if she will ever be able to conceive naturally again.
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Professor Ledger estimates that 100 women a year, in Sheffield alone, are undergoing such operations.
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Panorama will include an interview with the Public Health Minister, Caroline Flint, in the programme.
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The reporter for Panorama is Andy Davies, the producer is Chris Woods.
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Notes to Editors
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No comprehensive list of GUM clinics exists for the UK. Cross checking across a number of sources Panorama has striven to identify every clinic.
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We believe the number of clinics to be 269 and we have spoken to every one.
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A team of Panorama journalists contacted all 269 GU clinics in the UK over the last four weeks posing as patients. They telephoned the clinics between 8.30am and 7.00pm Monday to Friday.
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Three scenarios (one routine, two urgent) were presented:
1. As someone seeking a routine appointment;
2. As someone with symptoms of an STI (discharge over two days and burning sensation when passing urine) and in need of emergency treatment;
3. As someone who (despite having no symptoms) had been advised to seek urgent attention by their sexual partner who had contracted gonorrhoea.
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No appointments were ever made.
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Calls were secretly recorded, following the 91Èȱ¬'s Editorial Guidelines. No clinics are individually identified.
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This is a different methodology to the one employed by the Health Protection Agency's GUM Waiting Times Audit which collected data through a periodic cross sectional (questionnaire) survey of patients attending all GUM clinics in England.
