To ask the Secretary of State for Health what measures her Department is implementing to encourage women aged between 16 and 24 to practise safer sex.
Our current plans are to aim to launch the next sexual health campaign later this year. This will target 16 to 34-year-old men and women but with a concentration on the key 16 to 24 year age bracket. The campaign will focus on the risks of unprotected sex and the benefits of using condoms to avoid sexually transmitted infections including HIV and unintended pregnancies.
Also, the national chlamydia screening programme provides opportunistic screening for genital chlamydia infection and is offered to all sexually active women and men aged between 16 and 24 years old attending a variety of health and non health care settings in England. Every young person who accepts a chlamydia test is given an information leaflet which explains that using condoms every time they have sex can reduce the risks of getting or passing on chlamydia and other sexually transmitted infections including HIV.
This programme is linked to the implementation of the teenage pregnancy strategy, led by Department for Education and Skills, which seeks to both encourage young people to delay early sex and to improve their access to sexual health advice and services when they do become sexually active.
The teenage pregnancy strategy is achieved through a national media campaign; improved delivery of sex and relationships education in schools, and by making services more young people friendly and delivered closer to the point of need—in schools, further education colleges and other youth settings. Since the start of the strategy, the under-18 conception rate has fallen by 11.1 per cent., to its lowest level since the mid-1980s.
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