Committee highlights flaws in chlamydia screening programme

The report Young People's Sexual Health: the National Chlamydia Screening Programme looked at the cost effectiveness of the initiative, which launched in 2003 and has been rolled out by primary care trusts (PCTs) locally.

It found that the government failed to address problems at a local level and enforce targets.

For the first five years, just five per cent of 15- to 24-year-olds were tested, against a target of 15 per cent. It was not until 2007/8 that a tougher target of 17 per cent was introduced.

This did manage to boost the rate to around 16 per cent during 2008/9. However, the report adds: "The department’s lack of urgency in pressing PCTs to reach a high volume of testing means that the programme has not yet reached the level of activity where models predict that the prevalence of chlamydia will be significantly reduced."

The report also found that around £50m of the £150m allocated by the government to PCTS for the initiative between 2003 and 2009 was spent on tackling local health deficits instead.

Department of Health representatives told the committee that they had no way of tracing exactly where this money had been spent.

The committee said PCTs’ procurement and commissioning of testing equipment was "inefficient" and called for stronger government guidance in this area. The lack of evaluation by the government on the effectiveness of the programme was also called into question.

Health professionals involved in the tests should have been routinely offering young people safe sex advice, but the committee discovered this did not always happen.