SHAG weeks will need to make a major return at these rates

Sexual health activity all seems to have gone out of fashion a bit – but it may well need to step up a gear.

Last September the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) put out a press release urging students to use a condom and get tested regularly to protect themselves and others from sexually transmitted infections (STIs):

There is a very real danger of catching a sexually transmitted infection (STI) if having condomless sex this freshers’ week, as cases of gonorrhoea remain at record levels.

Gonorrhoea diagnoses in England rocketed to 82,592 in 2022 – an increase of more than 50 per cent compared to 2021. 15 to 24-year-olds are most likely to catch it, and 19 and 20-year-olds saw the largest rise.

You might surmise that 2021 had some Covid overhang in the data – but the rate (at 598 cases per 100,000 for 20 to 24 year olds) was also higher than 2019’s 495.

In fact rates of gonorrhoea were the highest since records began in 1918.

It’s not clear that the UKHSA has any actual data on whether the problem, and its increase, is concentrated in or even leans towards those at university – but what we do know is that young people aged 15 to 24 years remain the most likely to be diagnosed with STIs.

Anyway, 2023’s figures have just been published – and things seem to be getting worse. We’re now up to 596 cases of gonorrhoea per 100,000 for 20 to 24 year olds,. Chlamydia cases are stuck at about 2,000 per 100k for the age group, and the infection rate for Syphilis is at a recent-record high too.

Back in March the Commons’ Women and Equalities Committee said that the data should be a wake-up call to the government, local authorities, sexual health services, reproductive health professionals and others in the NHS, and those delivering Relationships, Sex and Health Education in schools.

It noted that the public health grant to local authorities for the commissioning of sexual health services has been reduced substantially during a period of increasing demand – with those services unable to maintain sufficient staff to provide an adequate level of service.

It also noted that condom use has been falling due to a range of factors – including cost, personal choice and a lack of awareness of their benefits.

And it called on the government to make funding available for public awareness campaigns focused on STI prevention among young people – co-designed and carried out in a way that normalises discussion of sexual behaviour and promoted in the online spaces where young people are currently turning to for advice.

Over the years I’ve tended to encounter folk that seem to think that this is bound to be an issue amongst the “uneducated”, and even amongst students an issue that *must* be worse in post-92s.

Since 2021 I’ve been reminding them that HEPI’s Sex and Relationships Among Students report told us that while on average, 61 per cent of students use a condom when they have sex, that figure fell to just 42 per cent for males from private schools.

Privately “educated” males were also the group which was most likely to have had sex under the influence of alcohol, and both least likely to agree that students should have to pass a class on consent, and least confident in understanding it or communicating it.