Alarming health stats..
Firstly, let me apologise in advance if this topic offends anybody but in my humble opinion this is way too important to ignore.
In the course of researching a project for University, I have come across some rather alarming figures, well, I think they are pretty frightening and would love to know your opinions.
In February this year the Health Protection Agency published the latest figures for HIV statistics in the UK. The 2003 figures show that there have so far been 5047 new diagnoses of HIV in the UK. The figure is thought to be nearer to 7000, as they haven't yet received all the reports from various parts of the country. Last year, we had 4204 new diagnoses, so therefore we have 20% more new cases this year.
Only 1414 new diagnoses were made within the homosexual community, compared to 2785 within the heterosexual community, both men and women being affected. The report does not comment about where the rest of the numbers come from, I can only assume injecting drug use (IDU), vertical transmission (mother to baby) and infected blood products, transfusions in countries such as China being particularly dangerous.
Of these new diagnoses, 254 were acquired within the UK, the rest were acquired abroad.
Between 1995 and 1999 Sexually shared infections rose by 76% for Chlamydia, 58% for Gonorrhoea, 54% for Syphilis and 20% for genital warts (PHLS 2001) The majority of cases, especially Chlamydia/Gonorrhoea occur in age groups 16-21 in females, 20-25 in males. I don't know about anyone else on this site, but I find these figures alarming. Who is educating our teenagers about sexual health? Whose responsibility is it? What can we do as parents and responsible citizens to ensure that future generations are protected. I know that people may find this a distasteful subject, but the implications are huge in terms of cost to the health service, as complications from these infections can lead to both male and female infertility, pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy, reactive arthritis and in the case of HIV, ultimately death.
I know because we're British, we don't talk about sex (although everybody does it) Maybe it's time to talk..
|