Posted on 07/27/2004 1:56:26 PM PDT by jwalburg
Rates of sexually transmitted infections in Britain rose again last year despite new programs aimed at reining in a decade of increases, health experts said Tuesday. The number of infections - 708,083 - was 4 percent higher than in 2002, but Britain's Health Protection Agency said the pace of the increase appears to be slowing. The statistics do not include HIV infections, which are tracked separately.
Sexually transmitted diseases have been on the rise across Europe since the mid-1990s. Health experts partly blame complacency over condom use and casual sex as fear of HIV has eased.
Such infections are not reliably tracked globally, which makes it difficult to draw comparisons between countries. Britain is the only country that produces these statistics in a systematic way, the World Health Organization said.
In the most recent global report on the topic, the WHO estimated that in 1999, 340 million new cases of curable sexually transmitted infections occurred worldwide in people aged 15 to 49. There is no cure for AIDS, so its incidence was not included in the estimate.
Apart from being serious diseases in their own right, sexually transmitted infections make it up to 10 times easier for the AIDS virus to spread through sex.
That link is particularly worrying in developing countries hit hard by the HIV epidemic. The United Nations health agency estimates that proper control of those diseases could reduce the incidence of HIV infection by 40 percent.
Sexual health campaigners also blame Britain's problem on delays in treatment, inadequate sex education and long waiting lists at clinics. Waiting lists are an oft-repeated complaint against the British state-funded national health system.
Health officials said the increases were also partly attributable to more people coming forward for testing. Gay men and young people remained the groups most affected.
"These are all preventable infections and it is a cause of considerable concern that we are still seeing increases in new diagnoses of STIs across the UK and unsafe sex is undoubtedly a main contributor to this," said Sir William Stewart, chairman of the health agency.
"This is the time of year when many young people go on holiday and these figures are a timely reminder of how important it is for people to take responsibility for their own - and their partners' - sexual health, and to use a condom with new and casual sexual partners," he said.
The largest increases were seen in syphilis, with cases up by 28 percent, and chlamydia, which can cause infertility and is often called the silent infection because it can have no symptoms.
While cases of genital warts increased by 2 percent, gonorrhea went down by 3 percent, from 25,065 infections to 24,309 infections, and genital herpes also dipped by 2 percent, from 18,432 cases to 17,990 cases.
Despite the relatively modest 4 percent increase last year, since 1995, the number of infections has increased by 57 percent. Chlamydia almost tripled, while cases of syphilis increased by more than 1,000 percent.
Hmmmm. And yet, BillyJeff's been here most of the year. I think.
This can't be. Leftists have assured us that condoms reduce the risk of disease and traditional morality is dangerous.
Gee whiz maybe its because they're all "toothing" etc and meeting everywhere in public for a quick gang-bang with people they dont even know then off to the local for a drink...
I don't think I even want to know what "toothing" is. In any case, Britain needs a lesson from Uganda right now, I think.
They use Blue tooth technology phones to find some one to play with, the blue tooth tech is good for something like 30-100 meters, so close proximity, lots of gays and younger adults use them in london to find playmates for a quicky in a public lav or similar location...
Well, it could have been something worse, I guess. Not that this is any great step forward for civilization. But it could have been something like that North Carolina dentist was doing.
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