Genito-urinary Medicine

(asked on 3rd July 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the best mechanisms to provide the older population with access to sexual health (a) information and (b) care.


Answered by
Steve Brine Portrait
Steve Brine
This question was answered on 9th July 2018

Public Health England (PHE) has not made an assessment of the best mechanisms for providing sexual health information and care to the older population.

Data on attendances at sexual health services in England are provided by age-group, ‘Table 3: Attendances by gender, sexual risk and age group, 2013-2017’, is attached.

In April 2018, PHE published data on from the National HIV self-sampling service which describes patterns of service use, including by age group, gender and sexual behaviour which is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-hiv-self-sampling-service.

Data on privately purchased HIV self-testing kits have been included in the HIV testing report, but no demographic information is available for these data. Further information is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hiv-testing-in-england.

PHE was granted approval by NHS Digital in May 2018 to enhance the Genitourinary medicine clinic activity dataset (GUMCAD), the national sexually transmitted infections (STI) Surveillance System in England, to collect information on whether people access sexual health services at their physical premises for STI testing or through their websites to order self-sampling kits. Implementation of this new GUMCAD dataset will commence in October 2018, after which PHE will be able to assess preferred routes of access by demographic and risk profiles, including by age group.

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