Sexual Health Victoria to close Melbourne CBD facility despite concerning STI rates
Posted by jesus_chrysotile
Sexual Health Victoria to close Melbourne CBD facility despite concerning STI rates
Posted by jesus_chrysotile
13 Comments
First Subaru kill off the STI now this?!
The state government has been axing public health, and particularly sexual health funding for a couple of years now.
This is just the first of many clinic and programs who will be shutting down.
But hey! At least the bikies and unions are flush with cash…
Oof this sucks. I’ve used SHV Box Hill before and they were incredible. If I had Elon $ I’d hand it over.
“It means thousands of clients will need to travel 15 kilometres away to access the same services.”
Oh wow, 15 whole kilometers, to one of the best-connected PT hubs in the state?! That could take up to… 25 minutes.
Good grief. The population centre of Melbourne is in the East/Southeast and is actually nowhere near the CBD. It makes sense for services like these to be close to where people live.
People have had to travel from their homes in the suburbs to the CBD for countless services for years. Agitate for a service in the West, sure, but there’s no reason services like these absolutely have to maintain a CBD presence.
That really sucks. I liked that place. I got my implant there and they were so nice, even while I was being a big baby about it (I’m a needle sook).
I suspect there is more to this than the headline and article delves into. Funding may have been reduced from this one service in the CBD, however they also said they would relocate that capacity to their boxhill address.
State funding is spread to improve access across the city and state.
I’ve just recently made use of the Victoria government funded women’s health service, which was completely free to use. https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/womens-health-and-wellbeing
The Victorian government has a sexually transmitted disease plan (https://www.health.vic.gov.au/publications/victorian-sexually-transmissible-infections-sti-plan-2022-30 )that mentions :
> The Melbourne Sexual Health Centre has introduced innovations in STI testing and service delivery to respond to increasing STI rates and service demand.
> The Centre has also established 6 general practice sexual health clinics,to further increase primary care capacity for STI testing and treatment:
3 in metropolitan Melbourne
3 in regional Victoria.
In addition to clinics, they have kits they send out to people at home to swab and send back. This increases accessibility to testing.
That’s fucked up. Just the other week I got help from another clinic dealing with a generously gifted case of gonorrhoea and didn’t have to pay a cent. Wished I could repay somehow. Maybe Albo wants to send some of my taxes toward the health sector?
That’s not a good thing. Harm minimisation is important. Helped loads of kids who couldn’t go to the family doctor.
This sucks, but can’t you get STI tests pretty easily from any GP or health service?
It’s taken the ABC two months to report on a closure that I posted here?
WTF, ABC?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/melbourne/comments/1scnu3p/sexual_health_victorias_cbd_clinic_relocation_to/](https://www.reddit.com/r/melbourne/comments/1scnu3p/sexual_health_victorias_cbd_clinic_relocation_to/)
For those saying “you won’t be affected at all” – since when is requiring a 2 hour round trip via public transport to attend an appointment if you need to work that day not being affected?
What really grinds my gears is the concept that “young people” are missing out here.
Sexual health is not just about young people, but includes women going through menopause. You know, the women who are at the greatest risk of going homeless, that need to continue to be able to work, and can’t, because they’re not functioning. Ask me how I know.
It sucks having to now travel all the way to Box Hill if the CBD is much closer. But it’s good to know the Box Hill Clinic will still be open
I think people don’t realise how poor sexual healthcare services are in Victoria. NSW has 50 public sexual health clinics, Victoria has one (1!!). This one clinic is Melbourne Sexual Health Centre on Swanston St, which was forced to close its walk-in STI testing service after turning back 4000 people in 2025. Now they use a triage system and encourage asymptomatic patients seeking an STI test to look for help elsewhere. The closure of Sexual Health Victoria’s CBD clinic is really concerning
They have opened other suburban clinics in the past few years, they just must have poor attendance in the cbd.