ACCESS
Australian Collaboration for Chlamydia Enhanced Sentinel Surveillance (ACCESS)
ACCESS is a pilot national Chlamydia surveillance program led by the Burnet Institute.
It will establish and monitor six separate chlamydia sentinel surveillance networks including General Practice (GP), Sexual Health Clinics, Family Planning Clinics, Aboriginal Medical Services, Antenatal Clinics and Diagnostic Laboratories networks. Each ACCESS network will provide unique information on testing uptake and prevalence of chlamydia infection.
Passive surveillance or case reporting is the only surveillance activity (ie. doctors and laboratories report basic demographic data on individuals diagnosed with chlamydia to health departments in each state/territory) in Australia. There is currently no national chlamydia sentinel surveillance. But even so, passive surveillance has demonstrated that chlamydia is a substantial problem. The ACCESS program aims to provide a systematic means of measuring changes in testing levels and assessing time trends to give Australia a robust chlamydia surveillance system. It will provide a sensitive and vigorous mechanism to assess whether large-scale testing initiatives have met their goals of targeting groups who are at risk of chlamydia.