This Monday the Ministry of Health presented the campaign “I am safe sex”, an initiative that seeks to prevent sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among young people under 25 years of age. This population group has had a twenty-year increase in these diseases both in Spain and worldwide.
The new campaign, which will run from this Monday until next June 23, seeks “shift the focus” toward vulnerable populations, as explained by the general director of Public Health and Health Equity, Pedro Gullón. The messages, disseminated in Spanish and the co-official languages, are mainly aimed at young people and focus on respect, information and protected and stigma-free relationships against STIs.
In total, they have been allocated 148,545 euros to this initiative, which will be disseminated on social networks, video platforms and conventional media. The measure is part of the strategic plan for the prevention and control of HIV and STIs in Spain 2021-2030.
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Against Sexually Transmitted Infections:
Speak, get informed, protect yourself.
Use prevention methods, get diagnostic tests and know the symptoms.
Without stigma, take care of your health and that of others.#YoSoyDelSexoSeguro pic.twitter.com/uViBvlkcb9
— Ministry of Health (@sanidadgob) https://twitter.com/sanidadgob/status/1800107311371063794?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Data from the National Center for Epidemiology from 2022 show that the 10.6% of STIs It corresponds to those under 25 years of age. In this population group, they are men those with the highest incidence (88.25 of infections) and those foreign (54.3%). Sexual transmission is the main route of transmission of these conditions, especially among men who have relationships with other men (71% of cases).
On the other hand, 37% of these young people had a delay in diagnosiswhich indicates the need to reinforce prevention and early detection in this age group.
It is the chlamydia the STI with the most cases: of the 26,518 registered today, 37.6% correspond to young people. It is also the only condition in which women (67.2% of cases in young people) have a higher incidence, especially in the range of 20 to 24 years, where the incidence is double that of men. In the range of 15 to 19 years, the male incidence rate triples. The gonorrhea It would be second in the classification, with a total of 23,222 registered cases, 23.8% of which correspond to adolescents and young adults. It is in the population group of 20 to 24 years where the highest incidence rates are found, twice as high in men than in women.
With respect to HIVIn 2022, 2,956 cases were diagnosed, of which 10.6% corresponded to people under 25 years of age (315 new diagnoses). “The number of Spaniards diagnosed with HIV infection has been decreasing over time,” said Victoria Hernando, researcher at the National Center for Epidemiology, although infections among the migrant population remain constant.
From the Spanish Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology, STI researcher Mar Vera explained that young people have “some biological and behavioral peculiarities that predispose them to sexually transmitted infections.” The immaturity of their immune system, as well as the “increasingly earlier” onset of sexual relations, mixed with toxic habits such as alcohol and drug consumption, are some of the factors that explain this ease of contagion.
The president of Youth Council of Spain, Andrea Gonzálezhas pointed out the “lack of sexual education, the influence of social stigmas and limited accessibility to resources” as factors that complicate the “ability to make informed and healthy decisions” of this population group.
“We found data such as that only 40.5% of young people feel insecure about contracting STIs or that 57.1% of young people have carried out unprotected practices”, stated González, “global data that underlines the need to improve sexual education and services available to young people.”
In that sense, he recalled that although the first consumption of pornography appears between 9 and 12 years old, the first “sexual talk” does not come until the age of 14 or 15. This education is limited and focuses on “what happens between men and women”, leaving out any other sexual-affective practice. This issue, González criticizes, is “always dealt with from a biological component, never from a social, interpersonal, consent, pleasure component….”
The young woman has advocated breaking taboos, improving bureaucratization in the care of the National Health System regarding STIs and in general “changing the perspective on the reality that young people live.”
