MEDICAL PRACTICE - CHLAMYDIASYDNEY

Rising STI and HIV rates warrant new screening approach

Australian Doctor October 17, 2006

THE recent surge in STI diagnoses will necessitate a new Australia-wide approach to screening, especially for young women at risk of Chlamydia and gay men at risk of HIV, experts suggest.

In the past decade, rates of Chlamydia diagnosis increased more than four-fold and new HIV diagnoses increased by 41% between 2000 and 2005, latest surveillance figures showed.

Sexual Health Professor Basil Donovan, of the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research, who reported the figures, said young women under 25 were most at risk for Chlamydia and should be routinely tested every year or so. Young men at risk should also be screened, he said.

Chlamydia testing reached just 7% of young women, but was required in 70% before the curable epidemic would decline, he said.

Of the HIV resurgence - predominantly in gay men in their mid 30s - Professor Donovan said increasing confidence in HIV treatments had led to safe sex awareness drifting out of consciousness.

This necessitated a reinventing of the wheel in educational approaches and the routine testing of all gay men, he said.

Federal Government guidelines on pre-test counseling requirements, drawn up when HIV was still a fatal disease, were being redrafted - and hopefully relaxed - because they acted as a disincentive for some GPs to test patients, he said.

Dr Jonathon Anderson, vice-president of Australasian Society for HIV Medicine and a Melbourne GP, said HIV was not just confined to inner-city Melbourne and Sydney practices with high caseloads, but was increasingly prevalent in outer suburbs and elsewhere, given the wide geographical spread of men who had sex with men.

Darlinghurst, Sydney & Byron Bay NSW Australia

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