Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the Government’s sexual health strategy will set aspirations to (a) reduce the R- rate of and (b) set reduction rate plans for (i) chlamydia, (ii) gonorrhoea and (iii) syphilis.
We are developing a new Sexual and Reproductive Health Strategy for England, which will be published later this year. The Strategy will set out our plans to improve sexual and reproductive health outcomes and wellbeing, including tackling sexually transmitted infections (STIs). As part of the Strategy’s development process, we are currently considering the control of STIs. The reproduction or ‘R’ numbers for various STIs will not be included in the Strategy, as the R number for a typical STI differs from many other infections and cannot not easily measurable or generalised to the overall population. Factors include the population density of susceptible people, transmission probability per sexual partner and the number of sexual partners during a period of time, as well as the time spent in the infectious state.