11:20am Thursday 11th March 2010
By Tina Robins
HEALTH experts, councillors and teachers are joining forces to encourage more young people in the Malmesbury area to check themselves for chlamydia after it was revealed they were spurning free testing kits.
Only 2.4 percent of those in the town and surrounding villages who were eligible for screening were coming forward against a target of 25 percent, NHS Wiltshire assistant director of public health Nicola Cretney told the area board.
The sexually transmitted infection often has no symptoms, but can lead to infertility if left untreated.
Charlotte Morris, assistant head at Malmesbury School said they had made screening kits available in the past, but there had not been much interest from pupils.
"Part of the problem was the marketing," she said. "They were in bright orange boxes with ‘not for virgins’ splattered across them. It became a bit of a joke within the school."
She told the meeting that at her sister’s GP practice in Bath it was normal practice for all young patients to be given the "chlamydia talk" even if it was not the reason they were at the surgery.
But she added, one possible reason for the low figure was that perhaps in such a rural area young people were not as sexually active and did not consider themselves to be at risk.
Stephanie Stephenson from Wiltshire College said a scheme where teenage sexual health advisors mentored other students and encouraged them to use the tests had a good take-up rate across all campuses.
Cllr Carole Soden said: "There is a very, very poor take up." She said a chlamydia nurse from the medical centre went to the high school once a week and offered tests to pupils, especially those she thought were vulnerable. But one in four kits handed out were not used.
Caroline Pym from the civic trust pointed to an advice service that used to operate at the town’s youth club. "It is not good enough just handing out kits. A lot of young people need confidential one-to-one advice," she stressed.
The board is to approach local GPs with a view to finding ways of increasing the uptake.
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