Sexually Transmitted Diseases (Public Health, State of the Souh West 2011)

This section has been provided by the HPA South West.

8.9.1 Sexual health is identified as one of the key national public health priorities for action due to concern about increasing national rates of diagnosed HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and also the continued high level of teenage conceptions. STIs are common and associated with serious long-term complications such as pelvic inflammatory disease, chronic abdominal pain, infertility, ectopic pregnancy, stillbirth and genital cancers. Sexual ill health particularly affects young people, certain minority ethnic groups and men who have sex with men. There is also a strong link with social deprivation.

8.9.2 New diagnoses of HIV infection havegradually increased since 1993 but over recent years have begun to stabilise with 315 new diagnoses recorded during 2009 compared to 307 in 2008 (source: HPA South West). A third of diagnoses of HIV are made late, by which time the immune system is severely affected by the virus. This indicates that access to testing should be increased.

8.9.3 An improved STI surveillance system (source: GUMCAD) was introduced in England in 2009. The HPA reports that between 2008 and 2009 the total number of new STI diagnoses made in genito-urinary medicine clinics decreased by 7.9% in the South West region from 29,930 in 2008 to 27,552 in 2009. This compares to a 2.3% decrease nationally. The infection that showed the greatest increase in new diagnoses was gonorrhoea which
increased from 745 new diagnoses in 2008 to 805 in 2009, an increase of 8.1%. Diagnoses of herpes in the region rose by 5.4% between 2008 and 2009 to 2,345; the percentage increase was similar to that for England (5.1%).

8.9.4 It should be noted that new diagnoses do not necessarily correlate to the prevalence of an infection. For example, screening or raising awareness of a particular infection can increase the number of people presenting at genito-urinary medicine clinics. This, in turn, could increase the numbers of new diagnoses without necessarily suggesting an increase in the overall level of infection in the population.