Dangerous liaisons: why syphilis and gonorrhoea have returned to haunt Britain
by Gaby Hinsliff, Guardian:
Clinic appointments fill up in minutes and babies are once again being born with syphilis – what is behind Britain’s sexual health crisis?
Tucked down a backstreet, Patrick French’s workplace is identified only by a generic blue NHS sign. Nobody would know why the men and women entering the building off Tottenham Court Road in central London were here. Even inside, it’s not obvious. With its blond wood floors and potted plants, all that distinguishes the Mortimer Market sexual health clinic from a dentist’s waiting room is the presence of enormous posters advertising Liquid Silk lubricant.
Such invisibility helps protect patients’ privacy in this most intimate field of medicine. But it also means a crisis can fly beneath the radar. When patients are waiting on A&E trolleys, we all hear about it. When they’re queueing out of the door to be tested for sexually transmitted infections (STIs), we don’t. “People say the NHS has been protected against cuts – well there’s one bit that hasn’t,” says French, a genitourinary medicine (GUM) consultant at central and north west London trust.
If you think you don’t know anyone who uses a service like this, you’re probably wrong. Last year, almost half a million cases of STIs were recorded in England and Wales, while clinic attendances rose by 13%. The most common diagnosis was chlamydia – easily treated with antibiotics, although it can cause pelvic pain and infertility if left. But what is ringing alarm bells is a rise in cases of gonorrhoea, up tenfold since 2008, and syphilis, an infection that had virtually been wiped out in Britain but is now running at levels not seen since the second world war. The rise is mainly among men who have sex with men, but not entirely. The Victorian spectre of babies born with syphilis is back, with three newborns infected by their pregnant mothers last year.
“When I started working in an STD clinic in 1988, syphilis had been eradicated in Britain. It took 18 months before I saw a single person with syphilis for the first time. Last week, we saw five or six in a day,” says French, who also works with the British Association of Sexual Health and HIV. “It’s the same with gonorrhoea; it became rather uncommon with the advent of HIV. And now it has become really common. Something really dramatic has happened.”
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