Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reveal that
cases of sexually-transmitted infections (STIs) among children and young
people in Britain have doubled over the last ten years. The ONS says that
in 2001 more than 1.3 million people under 20 were diagnosed with an STI.
The most common infections were chlamydia and genital warts among teenage
girls, the report said, and government strategy to lower teenage pregnancies
is “meeting little
success...The sexual health of adolescents in the UK is poor,” the
report concluded.
Thousands of people from around the country are expected at a lobby of their MPs on Tuesday 27 April to press the government to do more to fight against Africa’s HIV/Aids crisis. Organised by Action for Southern Africa, the National Union of Students and UNISON, the country’s biggest trade union, the lobbyists are asking MPs to put pressure on Chancellor Gordon Brown to increase the UK’s financial support to the Global Fund to fight Aids, TB and Malaria. For details of the event, visit: campaigns@actsa.org
The London Assembly says that there are at least 17,000 people with the virus in the capital and predicts that there will be over 50,000 HIV positive people on treatments in London in less than five years. It says that both the government and the NHS has failed to address the impending health crisis. GLA health committee chair Elizabeth Howlett, commented: “It is clear that public and political complacency is a barrier to the effective prevention, treatment and care efforts for this terrible virus.” Lambeth, in south London, now has the largest HIV population of any borough in the country, six times the national average.
A Swansea coroner’s court heard last month that a Mumbles Baptist minister hanged himself from a chapel beam because he had been tortured by thoughts he was HIV positive and would die of Aids. The court also heard that 52-year-old Rev Tom Griffiths feared he had caught HIV from body piercings and had infected his wife and son with the disease. Pathologist Dr Wyn Williams said that a post-mortem had confirmed that Rev Thomas was HIV negative. A suicide verdict was recorded.
Health experts in Cumbria have launched a campaign aimed at young people, following a big rise in the number of new heterosexual HIV cases in the area. New figures in the region show that heterosexual sex has now overtaken homosexual sex as the main exposure route for HIV. Experts are blaming cultural changes on the nightclub scene and the fact that more young people are travelling abroad for holidays that offer sun, sex and booze. The first sexual health conference in Cumbria also heard that Blackpool is now the North West hotspot for HIV infection.
Sex and relationship education should become a compulsory part of the national curriculum, with sex education starting around the age of 10. This was the recent recommendation from a panel of 25 HIV and sexual health experts as part of ‘The Big Conversation’ debate - the Labour government’s attempt to sample national policy opinions. The meeting called on the government to treat sexual health as seriously as issues like obesity, smoking and binge drinking.
