The National Chlamydia Screening Programme in England was refocused on reducing the reproductive harm of untreated infection in young women.
In practice: in community settings such as GP surgeries and pharmacies, screening is now proactively offered to young women. Services provided by sexual health services are unchanged.
Does This Mean Men Cannot Get Tested?
No, and this is the most common misunderstanding. Anyone can still be tested if they want or need one. What changed is who is proactively offered a test in community settings.
Men are still tested where there is an indication — being the partner of someone diagnosed with chlamydia, or having symptoms — and sexual health services test anyone who asks.
The Reasoning
Untreated chlamydia in women can cause pelvic inflammatory disease, which can lead to chronic pelvic pain, ectopic pregnancy and tubal infertility. In men, complications from untreated chlamydia are less common and generally less serious.
Given finite screening resources, the programme was directed at where preventable harm concentrates. That is a resource allocation decision rather than a statement that men's infections do not matter — and it sits alongside the fact that testing and treating men remains essential to interrupting transmission.
The Testing Trend
UKHSA reported a 9.4% decrease in the number of chlamydia tests carried out among young women aged 15 to 24 — the group the programme targets — with the decline driven by a drop in testing by internet services.
That decline matters. Falling diagnoses look like falling infection rates, but falling testing produces the same graph for a very different reason. When you see a headline saying an STI is declining, the testing volume is the number to check underneath it.
How to Get Tested
- Sexual health clinics — free, comprehensive, and will test anyone
- Free postal kits through many local sexual health services, availability varying by area
- GP — can test, and will if there is an indication
- Paid home kits, which are convenient but worth comparing against the free options first
Before paying, check what your local service offers. Free postal testing is widely available and uses accredited laboratories.
What a Test Involves
Chlamydia is detected by a NAAT test on a urine sample in men, or a self-taken vaginal swab in women. Throat and rectal infections require swabs from those sites, and are only found if those sites are sampled — a point many cheaper kits do not make clearly.
The window period is around two weeks. Testing sooner than that risks a false negative.
Comparing Kits
If you are buying, the differences that matter are not price alone:
- What is in the panel. Many cheaper kits cover chlamydia and gonorrhoea only, and do not detect syphilis or HIV, which need a blood sample.
- Which sites are sampled. Urine-only kits miss throat and rectal infections.
- Whether the laboratory is accredited, and what happens if a result is positive — a good service arranges treatment, not just a result.
If You Test Positive
Chlamydia is treated with antibiotics and treatment is straightforward. The part that gets skipped is partner notification, and it is the part that stops reinfection. Sexual health services can do this anonymously on your behalf.