SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED INFECTIONS

Promotion of Sexual Health among Teenage Girls to Prevent Sexual Transmitted Infections

Promotion of Sexual Health among Teenage Girls to Prevent Sexual Transmitted Infections

Introduction

Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are a serious health concern in the UK today. Many sexually transmitted infections are prevalent in our society. According to the Centers for Disease Control National Prevention Information Network, in the UK alone, an estimated 19 million new cases of STIs are reported each year. This is one of the highest rates of STIs in the industrialized world. In the UK, an estimated three out of four sexually active adults have human papilloma virus and one out of five have genital herpes infections. The cost of STIs to the UK healthcare system per year is estimated to be as much as $15.9 billion. Regardless of the fact that STIs are extremely widespread and add billions of pounds to the nation's healthcare costs each year, most people in the UK remain unaware of the risks and consequences of all but the most prominent sexually transmitted infection, HIV/AIDS (Wingood, 2007, pp 1016).

Due to undiagnosed and untreated STIs it is estimated that at least 24,000 teenage girls become infertile every year in the UK. These statistics point out not only the need for our population to be more knowledgeable and more willing to take steps toward prevention, but also the number of people currently dealing with the ramifications of being diagnosed with an STI. A number of people in the UK are having contracted STIs and many more acquire them every year. At least one million teenage girls become infected with Chlamydia every year. There are now at least 800,000 people with sexually acquired hepatitis B in the UK. More than 45 million teenage girls have been diagnosed with genital herpes with at least one million new cases diagnosed every year. Every year, more than millions of teenage girls are newly infected with genital human papilloma viruses. This paper will discuss all the possible ways of the promotion of sexual health among teenage girls in order to prevent sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in them.

Discussion

Hooking up: The current college sexual climate

Around the year 2000, research began to be published about the casual sexual encounters, or “hooking up” on college campuses. This came to be loosely defined as sexual behavior ranging from kissing to intercourse without any commitment to the sexual partner. This has become the norm for teenage girl students as opposed to dating. It can also be said that sexual experimentation is part of the developmental process and that navigating sexual intimacy is part of growth from adolescence into adulthood. While it is not known how this culture of casual sexual behaviours became the norm, there are some possible reasons as to why this is the case. One possible contributor to this change in teenage girls' interactions with one another is a shift in intimacy over the past decades (Coulson, 2009,pp 81).

Socially accepted patterns of interaction for adolescents and young adults have ...