Box 3.

Future reproductive health

• Assessing the probability of future infertility
• So when I got a letter [with the positive diagnosis] it was a shock. I was worried . . . it was the fact that it can make you infertile and when I had been to the doctor and I had asked her about pelvic inflammatory disease—like do you know if you have got it, like is there anyway to know how advanced chlamydia has got? And she said no not really until you start trying to conceive and you can't conceive that is when you discover, and I thought God—is this going to be the unknown thing until I'm trying to have a baby. The fact that I knew when I had contracted it—I thought maybe that would maybe give a timescale or an indication of whether or not it was likely to have done any damage, but she couldn't say . . . I just said, you know, do you know if you have got pelvic inflammatory disease, it was the nurse that I was speaking to at this point and she said . . . not always . . . So anyway I don't know . . . the things that I was worried about she [the doctor] didn't seem to give me any answers on. (Respondent 4, family planning clinic)