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Public health doctors have condemned the 'disgracefully slow' progress being made towards national chlamydia screening.
Delegates attending the BMA's annual conference of public health medicine and community health last week called on the DoH to expedite progress towards a UK-wide screening programme for chlamydia, which is due to be in place by 2008.
Dr Howard Barnes, a consultant in communicable disease control for West Yorkshire Strategic Health Authority, said: 'There were over 70,000 cases of chlamydia in Britain in 2001 and the figure is rising. With polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, population testing is possible, but there has been little progress toward national screening.'
He warned that if organised screening programmes were not set up soon,...