Sexual health funds 'diverted into NHS debt'
Research by the independent advisory group on sexual health and HIV (IAG) finds a "substantial proportion" of the £300 million earmarked for tackling sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and teenage pregnancies is not getting through to frontline services. More than a quarter of the 191 primary care trusts (PCTs) questioned said they had absorbed all the money allocated after the 2004 choosing health white paper into their overall budget, with a further 33 saying they had absorbed most of the money.Forty PCTs said this decision had led to a lack of staff and resources in their genito-urinary medicine (GUM) clinics, and 40 also said allocated funding was not getting through to contraceptive services on the front line. A further 31 trusts said funding for the Chlamydia screening programme had been withheld, hampering the government's plans to make this available in all areas of the country by 2007. Ministers have set targets to ensure people have access to GUM services within 48 hours, to cut rates of gonorrhoea and halve the number of under-18 pregnancies by 2010.
But today IAG chairwoman Baroness Gould warned: "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 read more
