Barriers to HIV testing: a survey of GUM clinic attendees

The recent report 1 of the death of rectal and throat sampling in women was an exaggeration. I write lest anyone think there has been a conversion from long held, 2 3 and recently reiterated 4 5 views. Bradbeer and Mears ques- tioned the utility of taking rectal and throat swabs in female gonorrhoea contacts by reference to a poster presentation, of which I was a co-author, at the IUSTI Asia-Pacific Conference 2002. 6 In this poster the conclusion stated that: ''At this clinic rectal microscopy and culture, and throat culture in women did not aid diagnosis. There appears to be a general reduction in the usefulness of these tests since the last major assessment.'' The authors offered one possible explanation (of several) for this but did not conclude (as implied by Bradbeer and Mears' citation) that these investigations could be abandoned.