Heterosexual men and women are set to have their sexual health services boosted, thanks to a unique clinic run by gay men for gays.

Freedom Health was set up in London two years ago and is preparing to move to bigger premises with more staff in the new year. This private clinic is the only gay health centre of its kind in Europe: one third of its work is traditional GP fare, dealing with anything from sore throats to stress-related illness; another third is offering sexual healthcare; and the last third is non-surgical treatments such as Botox and chemical peels.

But one of the main reasons for the clinic’s success is a rapid growth in the number of straight men and women who use it. They now account for a third of the workload and the proportion is rising.

Why? It’s usually because they’ve been wayward. The majority are in long-term relationships and have strayed on a business trip, a holiday, or a drunken night on the town. As gay men have already discovered, Freedom Health offers a faster, more discreet service than the NHS and is non-judgmental. Many gay men have encountered lingering hostility among medics in the NHS — who are overwhelmingly heterosexual — to sexual health- related issues.

Dr Sean Cummings, 42, founded the business in 2003 with his parner Lee Garrett, 38. “Gays and bisexuals feel more comfortable with people who they know will understand their lifestyle, whether it involves recreational drugs, alcohol, or multiple partners,” says Dr Cummings. “Straights come here because they also feel that they will not have to justify their behaviour, which they feel they might have to if they went to their GP or an NHS clinic.”

Dr Conor Molony, a South London GP, recognises that visiting your usual doctor can be unnerving when it comes to sexual health. “I understand that some people may be embarrassed to see their GP because we may know their mother, play golf with their father, or treat their partner. But we are not judgmental. We are here to help and advise.”

“There is nothing special about sexual health,” says Dr Cummings. “It’s not rocket science. We need to be less stuffy and less embarrassed. Too often there is an undercurrent of blame in clinics which is off-putting for young people.”

Freedom Health is tucked away in a fourstorey Georgian building that is also home to a specialist dentist and several plastic surgeons in Wimpole Street, between Baker Street and Oxford Street.

Gay men account for most of the business, perhaps because they are more aware of sexual risks than their straight counterparts. Traditionally, gays have a more liberated attitude to sex — others would argue more promiscuous or reckless — and 84 per cent of the 53,000 people in Britain who are known to be HIV-positive are gay men. Accordingly, they want a quick, discreet diagnostic service.

HIV test results (at £95) are available within four hours compared with up to three weeks in an NHS clinic. A gonorrhoea test (£105) is back within two days, and the same with chlamydia. Both can take several weeks through an NHS hospital system. Freedom Health has just launched an oral-swab test for hepatitis A, B and C, syphilis and HIV all together, which the clinic believes to be only one of its kind. This eliminates blood tests and needles as it is all done with one simple swab.

Dr Cummings says: “Men drive to us from the West Country, the South Coast, the North of England and Europe. If they have come for an HIV test, by the time most of them get home or back to their office we have the result for them.”

There is an entire category of male client that books an appointment at Freedom Health in advance of arriving in Britain on a business trip. The clients are all married or in relationships with women. They all have sex with men when they are here; often they have paid for it. And they want a check-up, a speedy result and a remedy before they return home.

Dr Cummings says: “We are not here to judge. We are here to help. The majority of our patients are clean as a whistle, but we give them peace of mind. And we always encourage people to have safe sex.”

Freedom Health, 19 Wimpole Street, London W1. A consultation costs £60. 020-7323 9007; www.freedomhealth.co.uk

FACING THE FACTS

• The Department of Health estimates that at least 14,000 people — or a quarter of the people in Britain who are HIV-positive — have no idea that they are carriers and are, therefore, at increased risk of spreading the virus.
• The figure is a statistical assumption based on an anonymous sampling of
  eight million people over the past 15 years in maternity units, sexual health clinics and accident and emergency departments.
• It’s not just the threat of HIV that leads gay men to Freedom’s door. Syphilis rates have risen by 1,520 per cent between 1990 and 2004.
• The development of new anti-retroviral drugs means that being infected with HIV is no longer a certain death sentence.
• There were 23,000 cases of gonorrhoea in 2004 — a rise of 111 per cent over the preceding ten years. The incidence is highest in 20 to 24-year-old men, and 16 to 19-year-old females, with a quarter of all cases linked to men-with-men sex.
• Chlamydia, the commonest sexually transmitted infection, has now topped the 100,000 mark, with half of those infected showing no signs of any symptons.

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