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Inside Health

Sexual health, contraception and tackling waiting lists

Inside Health

BBC

Health & Fitness, Science

4.4575 Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2021

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What has the pandemic done to our sex lives? We’ll hear if there’s been a baby boom with Dr Margaret McCartney and Dr Rebecca Thomson-Glover has the lowdown on sexually transmitted infections. We’ll also explore changes to contraception and sexual health services. Meanwhile it feels like we’re on the march to normality, but what about the backlog of patients whose treatment has been cancelled. We speak to Charmayne whose surgery has been held up by the pandemic and Nick Arresti from the British Orthopaedic Association to see how such waiting lists can be tackled.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello, you're about to listen to a BBC podcast, and I'm Ed Gamble, host of another BBC podcast,

0:05.4

The Traitors Uncloaked. But my show is available only on BBC Sounds, just like Ellis and John's

0:10.6

Saturday bonus episodes, the Pop Top Ten podcast with Scott Mills and Ryland, and comedy specials

0:16.2

from the likes of Harriet Kemsley, Susie Ruffel and Rommas Shranger Nathan. However, and maybe I'm biased, it's really all about the traitors uncloked.

0:24.3

So for a whole bunch of exclusive scoops and podcasts, listen only on BBC Sounds.

0:30.6

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

0:34.3

Hello, everyone. There's barely been an aspect of our lives that hasn't been touched by this

0:39.0

pandemic. Apparently there's been a surge. This is in the Sunday Times. This is a surge in sales

0:43.5

of quiet sex toys. Who'd know that that would be one of the effects of lockdown?

0:49.2

Who'd know? Who'd know, indeed? Yes, our sex lives have changed, and in case you missed broadcasting

0:55.9

house at the weekend, that was Edwina Curry talking about sex toys. But the NHS has had to

1:02.0

adapt to our shifting sexual habits from contraception to sexual health clinics, to HIV

1:09.2

testing. You know, all of those things have

1:11.5

had to adapt. At times it's been difficult, but also it has been a year-long opportunity to find

1:18.0

new ways of working that actually in the long run might be better for patients. So to get us warmed

1:23.7

up, I asked our resident GP, Dr Margaret McCartney, whether there had been a noticeable

1:28.5

difference in our sex lives. Hi Margaret, welcome back to Inside Health. Thank you for having me,

1:33.0

Jims. So, Margaret, I have an editor who I will not name that keeps on bounding up the stairs

1:40.0

from the newsroom to go, have we got any signs of the baby boom yet? There must be loads of

1:44.0

people with nothing else to do, so they're just having sex all the way through the lockdowns

1:47.8

and there's going to be a load of babies. Any sign of that happening yet? Yeah, Dream on James,

1:52.4

so the Office for National Statistics and they put out publication in December basically saying

...

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