Automatic Voucher-Based Treatment for Chlamydia
Automatic Voucher-Based Treatment for Chlamydia
A Scottish study has shown that it is crucial to ensure that partners get treated for chlamydia when their sexual partner has a positive chlamydia test.
The researchers have said that for partners, though going to a GUM clinic for a check-up is still the best option, vouchers for treatment should be considered as an option. They hope this would encourage people who are too embarrassed to go to a clinic to get treated.
For the study, the team gave out nearly 600 vouchers to people who had been diagnosed with chlamydia. The majority of these were women. The vouchers entitled their partners to go to their local pharmacy and receive a free dose of antibiotics, without them having to pay any prescription charges or visit a clinic to themselves have a chlamydia test.
40% of the vouchers handed out were redeemed, mostly within a few days. 4% of the partners chose instead to go to a GUM clinic in person (or at least, one of the GUM clinics being tracked by the team working on the study. The team do not know whether the remaining partners visited their own GP for treatment.
Chlamydia is one of the most common sexually transmitted infections in the UK and the US, with gonorrhoea also very common. Both are often asymptomatic and often unless someone has a chlamydia or gonorrhoea test, they will be unaware they are infection. This makes it likely that they will pass the infection on to their partner.
In the US in certain states, they have a system where when someone has a positive STD test, they are given spare antibiotics which they can then give to their partner. This is not legal in the UK.
However, there have been some concerns raised about the feasibility and efficacy of a voucher system for treating partners of people who have had a positive diagnosis.
There are fears that such cavalier handing out of antibiotics could lead to resistance developing to antibiotics. There are already concerns that the sexually transmitted infection gonorrhoea is becoming a superbug and currently people having a positive gonorrhoea test are being advised to have a re-test after treatment is completed.
However at the moment, the potential for chlamydia to become resistant to antibiotics is relatively remote, compared to the potential benefits of the scheme. Certainly if more people got treated for it then health officials would stand a better chance of reducing the sky-high infection rates.
Lead author of the study Dr. Sharon Cameron, of the Dean Terrace Centre in Edinborough, Scotland, said, "Partners may not feel they have an STI (sexually transmitted infection. They might be embarrassed to go to a clinic. ( This system) gives individuals another option of where they would want to go be treated."