Sexually transmitted infections are rapidly increasing in Ulster, where it can take six weeks to get an appointment because of a lack of doctors and nurses.
Consultant at the Royal Victoria Hospital Wallace Dinsmore, who has held a Genito-Urinary-Medicine (GUM) clinic there for almost 20 years, told the Telegraph that the service is reaching crisis point province-wide.
The latest figures from the Communicable Diseases Surveillance Centre show that the number of diagnoses for STI’s – chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, herpes and genital warts – reached record levels in 2005.
In 2004 the total diagnoses was recorded as 11,481. Last year figures peaked at 12,847.
The four hospitals that operate GUM clinics (with varying frequency) and their current waiting lists for a new appointment are; Royal Victoria, two weeks, Daisy Hill in Newry, four weeks for men and six weeks for women, Altnagelvin in Londonderry, four weeks, and the Causeway in Coleraine, two weeks.
A statement from Altnagelvin Hospital said: “We operate a triage system. When a caller contacts the GUM clinic and if they do not have symptoms, they need a check up, or they have a non-urgent condition such as genital warts, they will be added to the appointment list which is 4 weeks at present.
- Should the caller feel that their condition is more urgent, a nurse at the clinic will establish if an urgent appointment is necessary and the caller will then be seen within 48 hours.
Dr Dinsmore said that although hospitals like Altnegelvin are doing their best, the situation is simply unacceptable.
- There is a percentage of people with more than one infection, but that figure remains similar year on year, numbers attending GUM clinics are also going up all the time, quite often people going for a check up who have nothing wrong with them.
- This is because a lot of money has been put into health promotion in Northern Ireland, including raising awareness about STI’s and advising people to go to GUM clinics.
- But they have not completed the picture, because there is very, very little money to pay for the doctors and nurses needed to staff these clinics.
- The existing service providers are under enormous pressure, there is a major deficit here in Northern Ireland and this is why we have such long waiting lists for appointments at GUM clinics. “Three week waiting lists are common place. If you have syphilis or Gonorrhea, over a period of several weeks you can become quite seriously ill. You could also easily have an infection you don’t know about and be spreading it.
- We do try to see priority cases straight away but we can’t make an exception for everyone. For example the Altnagelvin clinic does not operate on a Thursday because there is neither a nurse nor a doctor to open it. So if you’re suicidal with worry on Wednesday night where does that leave you?
- There is a real need for a review of services, the provision needs to be addressed urgently.
- There is a continuous rise of new infections and new patients.
- Five years ago every clinic in Northern Ireland was walk in – that’s a distant memory now.
- In order to try to cope with the new numbers, we’ve tried to up the number being seen, but we just can’t see all of them.
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