Sir Chris Whitty concerned as sexual health clinics forced to "ration" free condoms

Sexual health services in England are “very close to a crisis” with clinics forced to ration the amount of free condoms they give out.

It comes amid a rise in sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in young people, which they said should be normalised in order to break down barriers. According to England’s chief medical officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty there are about 199,000 cases of chlamydia a year, as well as about 82,000 cases of gonorrhoea, about 26,000 cases of genital warts, and 8,500 cases of syphilis.

Dr Claire Dewsnap, president of the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV, added: "Access isn’t good enough. There’s no doubt about that. And there’s no doubt that that is as a result of reduced funding. "We’ve had a real terms funding reduction of about £150m over the last 10 years going to all sexual health services.

"We’ve got 35 per cent fewer school nurses than 10 years ago. They were often the trusted adult in school who would send you off to this. And you cannot just walk in. Children are telling me all the time they are not able to get access, they are not able to get appointments.

"In many clinics, unfortunately, as horrific as this sounds, we ration how many [condoms] we give."

Sir Chris Whitty warned that "large numbers of people carry these infections without knowing about them".

He said: "Gonorrhoea is, in the UK and internationally, one of the most highly drug-resistant organisms we have," he said. "So we’re down to a very limited number of antibiotics now which can be used – previously we’d have had a much wider range.

"Fortunately, this hasn’t translated into drug resistance for most of the other antibiotic-treatable sexually transmitted infections, at least not to this level. But if we are really in deep trouble at the moment we do need some new antibiotics or some new way of approaching."