Call for women's sexual health strategy

A national sexual health strategy is needed as a matter of urgency if the high chlamydia and cervical cancer rates are to be adequately addressed, the new director general of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) has said.

Dr Gill Greer, who has been in Ireland for two days, met Minister of State for Overseas Development Conor Lenihan yesterday and delivered a lecture on women's reproductive health in the developing world at Trinity College last night.

Ireland Aid funds two of the IPPF's projects - one in Ethiopia and another in Lesotho - both of which run family planning and HIV clinics across the countries.

Speaking to The Irish Times yesterday, Dr Greer said that while Ireland had "progressed an awful lot" in the past 15 years in ensuring women's access to family planning and sexual health services, we still had one of the highest rates of chlamydia in Europe, did not have full cervical cancer screening and were continuing to push the abortion issue "under the carpet".

Some 3,353 cases of chlamydia were notified in 2005 - a rate of 85.6 per 100,000 population.

However, according to the Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA), the true numbers are likely to be much higher as the infection, which can cause infertility in women, has no symptoms. Women must be screened regularly for it.

The IFPA last night supported Dr Greer's call for a national sexual health strategy, saying it would ensure all agencies working in the area would act together to deliver comprehensive results.

On abortion, Dr Greer said she recognised a country's "sovereign right" to make its own laws.

"Making abortion illegal though does not prevent it from happening - it simply drives it under the carpet. It we are really serious about women's right to health, there has to be a right to control their bodies and to bodily integrity." The provision of a full, national, free cervical screening programme was "really important".

She and Mr Lenihan discussed Ireland Aid's commitment to the IPPF's work and Dr Greer said Ireland was a "country which in many ways is working to honour its commitments" to increase Government spending on overseas aid to 0.7 per cent of GNP by 2012.

Though the IPPF's projects in Ethiopia and Lesotho were established to provide family planning - to women in particular - a growing proportion of their work is in HIV and Aids. "You cannot separate the two. Young women will not go to a HIV or Aids clinic, but they will come to us."