People in rural areas are to be given additional access to sexual health information, after a £1m funding boost was announced yesterday.
Public health minister Shona Robison made the announcement during a visit to a clinic in the Borders, timed to coincide with the launch of the second annual report into the national sexual health strategy.
It was claimed that outwith towns and cities, people found it harder to seek confidential advice beyond that of their GP.
She was speaking as she visited the Borders Clinic in Galashiels, which was established as a result of the funding NHS boards received when the strategy was launched.
Ms Robison said: "We have continued the additional funding NHS boards receive for the next three years, and have allocated £1m to increase access to independent sexual health information available in both urban and rural settings.
"We are considering the best method of achieving this. The Scottish Government has made plain its commitment to improving public health and tackling health inequalities. Better sexual health and well-being for all is part of our health improvement agenda."
But she conceded that much still needs to be done to address the rising rate of sexually transmitted infections and teenage pregnancy.
Figures released in November showed the number of cases of syphilis in Scotland was higher than it has been for more than 50 years, while the number of diagnoses of chlamydia increased by 4% from 2005 to 17,926 in 2006.
There were 345 new cases of HIV identified in Scotland in 2006.
Writing in the report, Ms Robison said: "No strategy is going to transform the sexual health and well-being of the nation overnight - it will take time to reverse rising incidence of sexually-transmitted infection and current rates of teenage pregnancy."
The teenage pregnancy rate in Scotland has been steady at around the same level for the last decade, but is among the highest in Europe.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article