Changes are being made at sexual health clinics in our area.
The Leeds, Grenville and Lanark District Health Unit says they go into effect as of Monday and include Pap tests no longer being offered.
Clinical Services Manager with the health unit, Jennifer Adams, says the decision to alter the services was made after they saw a change in the demographics and sexually transmitted disease transmission in the region.
With organizational capacity also changing, and staffing back to pre COVID-19 pandemic levels, the decision to drop Pap testing, which isn’t a mandated core service of the health unit, was made.
Adams says the decision is unfortunate and adds some of the trends they are seeing are distressing.
“I think for me the bigger alarm is the change in demographics and definitely seeing younger, higher risk, behaviours associated with sexually transmitted diseases.”
Adams adds they did expect to see a change in trends with access to testing not as readily available during the pandemic.
