Sexual Health Services Funding

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (14:49): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before directing a question to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing.

Leave granted.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: There is no greater misnomer, I think, than that title. InDaily today reports that funding pressures within the minister's agency are forcing service cuts at Clinic 275, the Adelaide health centre on North Terrace. Now for the first time, InDaily report, the service is turning away heterosexual clients over the age of 25 who don't fall into priority groups. InDaily reports that 30 people, approximately, have been turned away from Clinic 275 each week since the policy was changed in September.

That is on the back of the clinic having already reduced its hours of service earlier this year. It is also in the context of SA Health having declared an outbreak of syphilis in Adelaide earlier this month. The budget cuts to community HIV services, to SHINE SA, forcing the closure of clinics in the northern and southern suburbs and now to his own agencies and sexual health clinics, are causing significant concerns to clinicians and to the community. We have already heard this week 300 doctors raising their concerns in an open letter yesterday.

Minister, as you are responsible for cutting the funding that kept these services available to South Australians, how will you explain to South Australians the rising sexually transmitted infection rates that we will now see on the back of these closures of these very important services?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:51): The Adelaide Sexual Health Centre provides a highly specialised service to complex cases, and it has been their ongoing practice that the centre prioritises members of the community who are most at risk. I am advised that from time to time they have provided advice and referred people. In line with similar clinics interstate, the decision was made in September to refer heterosexual people over the age of 25 with Medicare who are experiencing those symptoms to other services.

ASHC routinely refers less complex cases to GPs. The member's suggestion that this is somehow related to budget cuts is clearly ludicrous because the decision was made in September. The budget only came out during September. The reality is these services do need to prioritise from time to time and that is what the clinic has done.