News August

Sexual Health Funding 'Diverted'

Millions of pounds earmarked for sexual health services are not reaching the frontline, a Government advisory group has warned.

A substantial proportion of the £300 million set aside for sexual health is being diverted to pay off debts, the Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health and HIV (IAG) said.

Many primary care trusts (PCTs) and strategic health authorities (SHAs) have withheld all or part of the funding to cover deficits, it argued.

A survey for the group found that the cash set out in the Government's White Paper is reaching front-line services in only 30 out of the 191 PCTs questioned. A total of 51 PCTs said they had absorbed their entire allocation into the general PCT budget and 33 had withheld some or most of the sexual health funding. Forty of the PCTs said allocated funding had not reached contraceptive services.

When it came to cash for the local area's chlamydia screening programme, 31 PCTs said funding had been withheld. Forty PCTs said genito-urinary medicine (GUM) services were being affected by funding issues, resulting in recruitment freezing and understaffing.

The Government has pledged to make sexual health one of the top six priorities for the NHS in 2006/07.

Recent figures showed a rise in the number of cases of most sexually transmitted infections. Chlamydia remained the most commonly diagnosed infection, with 109,832 new cases in 2005 - a 5% increase on the previous year.

Baroness Gould, chair of the group, said: "The IAG believes that it is essential that SHAs and PCTs recognise that investment now in front-line sexual health services will save them a great deal of money in the future. Better sexual health services bring benefits for patients as well as delivering cost savings for the NHS by reducing the number of STIs (sexually transmitted infections) and unwanted pregnancies.

"PCTs and SHAs allocate their own budgets as they see appropriate, and many PCTs are facing difficult financial circumstances at the moment. Reports coming back to us indicate that sexual health services are still facing difficulties in many areas, with all that is associated with poor funding such as recruitment freezes, clinics closing, and cutting services in areas like contraception, not to mention lowering morale among staff."

Source http://uk.news.yahoo.com/