32 years have passed since the “Put it on, put it on him” And things don’t seem to have changed much. Well, something yes. Remember that in those days, some pharmacies refused to sell condoms to minors. But the current situation doesn’t look good either. At Magnet, a year ago we told how the former Minister of Health warned of an increase “very worrying” of sexually transmitted infections in young people. There was talk then of an annual increase of 26.3% and we are getting worse.
The figures speak for themselves: an increase of 1,073% of STIs in women in the last 10 years.
Yes, 1,073% more. A worrying number that will force institutions to rethink other strategies. According to a new Bloom Observatory report on STIs in women, infections have skyrocketed in recent years. Specifically, between 2012 and 2019 there was growth reaching a record number of infections of 16,304 cases per year. This trend has caused doctors to set off alarms and studies abound to find out where the problem is.
The most common STIs. If we access the report, we will see that only 64.8% of the cases diagnosed in this period correspond to chlamydia. Then gonorrhea, with 15.6% of cases. It is followed by HIV (8%), syphilis (5.6%), hepatitis C (3.6%), hepatitis B (2.3%) and lymphogranuloma venereum (0.1%). And, although almost all infections have increased in recent years, the trends are uneven for each STI. For example, gonorrhea has been the one that has grown the most since 2015: 729%. And chlamydia 480%. These are figures that make your hair stand on end.
Why? Mainly due to a generalized ignorance about STIs. As we already commented in Magnet in that article, the low perception of risk is what causes the least use of prevention measures such as condoms. In addition, as the new study indicates, the ways in which we relate sexually have changed: couples contact each other through dating applications and sexual life begins at younger ages. The number of only sexual relationships (follamigos, as it is known in the jargon) or exchanges of partners have also grown.
What is most striking about the report is that 70% of women consider that they have poor knowledge about sexually transmitted infections and 13.46% of them would not know how to mention any of them. The problem is clearly educational.
The profiles. The ages with the highest risk are between 15 and 35 years. One of the reasons may be that from these ages couples stabilize more and change less. Recent studies also emphasize the territorial impact: it is mentioned that where there is a greater concentration of population and tourism, there will be more cases of STIs. That is why Catalonia is in the lead, with no less than half of the cases of STIs in all of Spain. It is followed by Madrid, the Valencian Community and Andalusia.
And the men? Although this study only offers data on women, the male case is just as devastating. In reality, the highest rates occur in men, and gonorrhea infection is the highest: 98.8 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, in the population between 20 and 24 years of age. Also the syphilis and the chlamydia. What happens is that women have check-ups more often than men, either by going to the gynecologist or the doctor. In contrast, men almost never go through the consultation. And if we take into account that 50% of STIs have no symptoms (two out of three chlamydia do not manifest themselves), it is the perfect cocktail.
Goodbye to the condom, hello to the “reverse gear”. Going back to the 1990 campaign, the legendary “Put it on, put it on him”, we see that we have not learned anything. So, prevention campaigns were closely associated with HIV and, once the crisis was over in the 1980s and 1990s, the authorities lowered the piston and the general population forgot that there were STIs. Now him condom use among young people it has fallen from 84 to 75% since 2002.
And not only that: experts explain that one of the reasons for the increase in STIs is that protection is not used during oral sex. In addition, the Ministry of Health has long been warning of a tendency to use unsafe methods such as “reverse” (not ejaculating inside the vagina). A practice used by one in four women and that does not protect against most STIs, since they are transmitted by previous fluids.
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