17cÆð²ÝÉçÇø

This week, Victoria’s largest sexual health and education centre confirmed it will close its Melbourne CBD clinic at the end of the month, consolidating services into Box Hill ¾±²Ô²õ³Ù±ð²¹»å.Ìý

It’s unbelievably fucking bleak watching Victoria quietly dismantle sexual health services while STI rates continue climbing, mpox spikes are still happening, and queer communities are again being told to just cope with less.

The service provided more than 16,500 appointments to 8,663 clients last year – record demand. And yet, the response wasn’t expansion, or even emergency funding. Nope! Total closure.

Sexual Health Victoria that state government funding has not meaningfully increased in 15 years outside inflation indexing, and funding hasn’t kept up with demand and their overhead costs.

“We’d like to be able to provide as many appointments as we possibly can, but the demand is so high it’s a challenge to meet that,” Sexual Health Victoria spokesperson Sarah Cabret told ABC.

Meanwhile, syphilis rates in Victoria now sit more than four times higher than they were in 2010. Gonorrhoea and chlamydia rates remain stubbornly high. Gonorrhoea rates in Victoria have surged 55 per cent since 2021, and , most gonorrhoea diagnoses nationally were among gay and bisexual men.

When sexual health clinics close, the 17cÆð²ÝÉçÇøIA+ community remembers

So, anybody pretending that the 17cÆð²ÝÉçÇøIA+ community won’t be one of the communities hardest hit by sexual health clinics closing is kidding themselves.

These clinics test for STIs, but they are also where healthcare professionals are trained, and where they deliver sexual health education programs to school children. These clinics are where people access HIV prevention, PrEP, mpox vaccinations, counselling, reproductive healthcare, gender-affirming referrals, and much more.

The 17cÆð²ÝÉçÇøIA+ community knows exactly where this road of defunding leads – because we’ve walked it before.

We remember the HIV/AIDS crisis, and governments treating gay deaths as inconvenient background noise. We remember having to build our own care networks because institutions simply wouldn’t protect us. That history is modern; it sits in the bones of this community.

The truly maddening part is that none of this is surprising. Sexual health services across Australia have been warning for years that demand is far outpacing resources. 

Yet sexual health continues to be treated like an optional side project, instead of core healthcare infrastructure.

Anonymous sources within sexual health and community health sectors have told 17cÆð²ÝÉçÇø that funding scarcity – and even significant funding cuts – have become an increasing concern across the sector, but feel they can’t speak on it publicly, since organisations are already operating in survival mode.

Meanwhile, Victoria continues promoting itself as a progressive, queer-friendly state. As a Melburnian, I truly do believe it’s doing a bit better than other states in this arena – but it has absolutely let our community down here, so infuriatingly hard.

Politicians posting ‘Happy Midsumma!’ or doing appearances at the Victorian Pride Centre means sweet fuck all if our people can’t access basic sexual healthcare.

The 17cÆð²ÝÉçÇøIA+ community buried too many during the HIV/AIDS crisis to stay quiet while this happens again. 

Because if sexual health clinics keep closing or losing funding, history isn’t just likely to repeat itself. It’s inevitable.