[lettie]

There really are no easy answers to any of these issues, and although comdom sales have increased according to Durex, most of the research into the use of condoms show that people are not using them every time they have a casual encounter or with a regular partner. Some of the research has been done by Durex (who are actually not bad at this) and the main one really was 1999-2001 NATSAL, published in the Lancet on 1/12/01 (National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles) This showed that more teenagers are having their first sexual encounters before the age of 16, some as young as 13 (which I know anyway, as I've looked after em in labour) and that although many of them use contraception the use is sporadic. Many of these kids also believe that the pill protects them from infections, which is of course total nonsense. There have been pilots for a National Chlamydia screening programme just in 2 sites that I'm aware of whereby all women are screened when they go to the doctors/ family planning/ smear tests etc. The reason they have singled out women is that they are more likely to comply, as we are used to being fiddled with, and that they are more likely to attend. Ironically in Sweden, think it was about 20 years ago, they recognised an upsurge in sti's, they immediately implemented a national screening programme, picked up infections early, treated them and reduced their pelvic inflammatory rate by approximately a sixth (quite a lot of money) the screening programme would probably have paid for itself with IVF savings. For UK, the country who pioneered IVF, you'd think that more money would be spent on prevention rather than a very expensive means of getting pregnant.