By MARTIN JOHNSTON health reporter
Senior school pupils will be checked for chlamydia in a study that could be used to push for more sexual health clinics for people as young as 10.
Fifteen hundred pupils aged 16 to 18 will be recruited for the study in randomly selected classes at
high schools that agree to take part.
Students will fill in a questionnaire and give a urine sample which will be tested for chlamydia, a sexually transmitted infection (STI), if they say they have had sexual intercourse.
A nurse will later meet each participant individually. Those with chlamydia will be directed to treatment and asked to identify people with whom they have had sex.
The six-month study in Christchurch schools is being run by the Family Planning Association, Canterbury Sexual Health and the Christchurch School of Medicine.
Doctors and health authorities are worried about the rapidly rising rate of STIs, including chlamydia. They say this shows many people are not hearing or not heeding safe sex messages.
Chlamydia is usually symptomless and is readily treated by antibiotics, but can cause infertility.
In the last September quarter, 717 confirmed cases were reported by sexual health clinics, up 25 per cent from the same period in 1999. It is feared that the true rate may be twice as high since half of STI cases are handled by other clinics.
Family Planning spokeswoman Dr Sue Bagshaw said yesterday that chlamydia was probably much more common because people usually did not know they were infected. If the study showed the problem was bigger than realised, "we can say we need resources to focus on this problem ... "
She said more resources were needed to help to implement the new school health curriculum, which covers sex education, and to set up more free sexual health clinics specifically for young people.
These needed to cater for youngsters from puberty - as young as 10.
Dr Bagshaw said the study's age group was picked because parents' consent was not needed from age 16.
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