| Author | P Carabot |
| Abstract | The number of attendances keeps increasing with a high proportion of asymptomatic patients attending for screening. This health consciousness is encouraging and need to be sustained. The number of serious diseases continues to increase, in particular syphilis and HIV. Syphilis rose by 80% since 2004, and the HIV positives rose from 3 to 7 cases (4 in the young). It is felt that this could be just a snap-shot picture, and the prevalence could be much higher. 17% of the gonococcal cases were resistant not only to penicillin, but also ciprofloxacin our current first-line treatment. Sexual behaviour remains unchanged with as many as 46% of patients admitting to casual sex and 65.5% never using condoms. The rate of casual sex among MSM and bisexuals is even higher (71%). The situation might seem containable at present, but it could easily escalate exponentially with disastrous effects on our limited resources, especially if the feared increase in HIV positive patients were to occur. It is therefore again strongly urged that (1) Safer sex health promotion campaigns are greatly intensified; (2) Sex education in schools, (and its uniform delivery) is thoroughly reviewed; (3) The National Sexual Health policy is rewritten under the chairmanship of a world recognised expert on the subject; (4) National prevalence studies of the major STIs (HIV and Chlamydia in particular) are urgently carried out. One cannot plan any sensible policies without this basic information. |
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| Key words | genito-urinary medicine, sexually transmitted infections, prevalence, condoms, bisexuals, sex |