City’s sexual health services brought together at clinic

NHS North Yorkshire and York has today announced the family planning and sexual health services provided at Monkgate Health Centre in York are merging to become a “one stop shop” to try to make it more accessible to local people.

The change follows lengthy consultation which highlighted that family planning and sexual health services should be rolled together into a combined service.

A new website has also today been unveiled for the whole of North Yorkshire, which provides details of sexual health services across the county as well as advice and information.

Experts say they hope the new services will help reduce the high rates of sexually transmitted infections in North Yorkshire that have almost doubled since 2000.

In 2007, there were 2,400 cases diagnosed, of which almost half were for chlamydia

Virginia Smith, matron for sexual health at York Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We continually strive to make improvements to our services and this change is a direct result of feedback from our service users.

“It’s common for someone accessing family planning services to also require sexual health services and vice-versa, so having to make two separate trips was an obvious inconvenience for people.

“We are confident that our new Yorclinic will ensure people can receive the advice and treatment they require as quickly as possible.

“We’ve been working closely with young people to ensure information about sexual health services in their area is easy to find. Our work highlighted that a lot of people were unsure about where their local sexual health service was and didn’t know how to find out.

“The vast majority said they would typically access information online and hence why we’ve developed this new website.”

There has been a dramatic leap in the number of cases of chlamydia in North Yorkshire, from just 100 in 1995 to nearly 1,000 in 2006.

Young adults under 25 are most at risk.

The website address is www.yorsexualhealth.org.uk.