Condoms. - Page 5

lettie · 08-11-2005, 10:35

Also, when questioning teenagers about sexual health, they are actually a lot more knowledgeable than we were... They tend to know where to get treatment, and don't worry too much about Gonorrhoea/Chlamydia, because they are easily treatable. However, teenagers today see HIV and AIDS as old peoples diseases. Publicity dictates that people die of AIDS when they are older (which is true in most cases). teenagers equate this with catching the disease older......

Modern drug therapies give HIV sufferers an near normal life span these days, but 30 years worth of treatment comes at a price, roughly £100,000 per year, per person. With over 50.000 known sufferers in the UK receiving treatment (a large percentage of which are immigrants) the cost to the UK taxpayer is enormous...

WillowTheWhisp · 08-11-2005, 10:46

It's a funny thing Less but you reminded me of something I was thinking when I was reading another thread yesterday about how us oldies can't possibly understand what it's like being a teenager. Whn you're 16 and look at anyone of 46 (or more) those 30 years seem like an impossible chasm and you can't imagine ever being THAT OLD! But when you're 46 and you look back at being 16 it only seems like yesterday and you can't even remember becoming "that old".

Looking back doesn't take all that much effort really does it? It amuses me when a teenager thinks I can't possibly understand how they feel about something (I used to think exactly the same thing about my parents) but the truth is I can understand a heck of a lot more about what it is like being 16 than a 16 year old can about what it's like to be 46+! Every generation must think they are the only ones every to have been young.

WillowTheWhisp · 08-11-2005, 10:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by lettie

Publicity dictates that people die of AIDS when they are older (which is true in most cases). teenagers equate this with catching the disease older........

This is a point which had never occurred to me and it's something which needs addressing in that case. They need to realise that just as they can catch something easily treatable they can also catch something far more serious.

I mentioned a poster in Peel House, but that poster is directed at young people yet probably very rarely seen by young people as most of the people who sit facing it are elderly patients waiting to see the nurse for blood pressure checks and such like.

Surely posters with a hard hitting message could be put up in places where kids go?

shakermaker · 08-11-2005, 12:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by WillowTheWhisp

This is a point which had never occurred to me and it's something which needs addressing in that case. They need to realise that just as they can catch something easily treatable they can also catch something far more serious.

I mentioned a poster in Peel House, but that poster is directed at young people yet probably very rarely seen by young people as most of the people who sit facing it are elderly patients waiting to see the nurse for blood pressure checks and such like.

Surely posters with a hard hitting message could be put up in places where kids go?

they put big enough messages up for the quit-smoking campaign around blackburn and accy, and i think these issues should be much more important to the govt than getting people to quit the stick...
prioritise mr blair!

SPUGGIE J · 08-11-2005, 12:37

At present there is nothing to be gained politically from this situation thus its left to simmer away on a back light. The posters are there to make it look like something is happening when its not and as pointed out these posters are in the wrong place (that or they are meant to put a pensioners blood pressure up). The diseises are curable and thats were the complacencey lies because they have treatment and a cure for these. Aids on the otherhand is "battered" into but eventually kills.

What happens if some of these STD's start to become resistant to the treatment or new strains appear that they cannot control? Will they panic? Would they have an answer? Or are these people condemed because of their arrogance niavity and the "we have other issues to deal with attitude of the govenment departments" I hope my own child and the children/teens of members out their can trust there parents enough to talk about this subject. Their health is more important than whats cool whats not and the latest crazies. I care about my daughter and would bend over backwards to help her avoid this "sleeping" disaster.

Rammble finished for now.

lettie · 08-11-2005, 13:05

Spuggie, Gonorrhoea has already become resistant to some antibiotics now. They have had to change the treatment and sometimes it takes more than one course of treatment to get rid of it. The long term health costs of these treatable diseases being left untreated is phenomenal. Men and women can be left infertile, reactive arthritis, pelvic inflammatory disease, severe testicular infections (honestly Buster Gonad would be jealous), severe chest and eye infections of newborn babies whose mothers have the infections. The list goes on and on.....
A lot of people don't realise that these long term illnesses exist. Lets face it. How many fellas would tell their mates in the pub that they were hospitalised with the 'Buster Gonad' problem because they had Chlamydia...

grannyclaret · 08-11-2005, 15:27

the best protection in my day was just to say'' thanks but no thanks.........

SPUGGIE J · 08-11-2005, 15:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by grannyclaret

the best protection in my day was just to say'' thanks but no thanks.........

Unfortunately its the in thing to try it now GC and to hell with the end result.

garinda · 08-11-2005, 17:58

Like other people have mentioned, when you are young you feel imortal, and all thoughts of death seem along way off.

Even people that are aware that there are risks in having unprotected sex, seem to think that 'barebacking,' [sex without a condom,] is a risk worth taking because 'it won't happen to them.'

It does, and education is the only answer.

Graham Jones · 08-11-2005, 18:29

I think there are a lot of good points and HIV is a local issue now. Suffers live within the Hyndburn area as do drug users and the chances of infection are greater.

We need the needle exchange proposed by the PCT and it got planning permission but who leant on the PCT to pull it, Britcliffe.

I would not want my son infected with AIDS with someone else [on the pill for eg?] who may not even know they are infected.

garinda · 08-11-2005, 18:41

Graham the point you made that just because the needle exchange wasn't granted permission for a town centre location because of Britcliffe, doesn't mean that drug addicts will still not come into town to do there shopping like everyone else, was a very good one.

The message needs to be got across that you only need to sleep with one person ONCE to become infected. You are coming into contact with that one person's other partners, and their partners, and their partners, and their partners........the list is endless.

Self protection is easy, if abstinence isn't an option, and that message should be getting through to young people right now.

katex · 08-11-2005, 18:47

At the end of the day, no matter how much knowledge is given to our young and older people even, not quite the same is it with one of them things on !?! Mixed with the pill and no fear of pregnancy, stirrings take over. Difficult to keep common sense at times like this.
Agree with Garinda though re. immortality in the young, but not just the young, you never expect it to happen to you.

garinda · 08-11-2005, 18:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by katex

At the end of the day, no matter how much knowledge is given to our young and older people even, not quite the same is it with one of them things on !?! Mixed with the pill and no fear of pregnancy, stirrings take over. Difficult to keep common sense at times like this.
Agree with Garinda though re. immortality in the young, but not just the young, you never expect it to happen to you.

Yeah condoms are a bit of a pasion killer, but the good thing is there is no stigma in buying them nowadays. You can pop them in your basket with your groceries, and not have to buy six combs from a chemist, or have the barber trim your hair twice in one day because you were too afraid to ask for 'something for the weekend.'

Especially if I was a girl, and knew all the health risks that I might be facing, I'd make sure the boy rubbered up, even if it wasn't 'quite the same.'

lettie · 08-11-2005, 19:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Graham Jones

I think there are a lot of good points and HIV is a local issue now. Suffers live within the Hyndburn area as do drug users and the chances of infection are greater.

We need the needle exchange proposed by the PCT and it got planning permission but who leant on the PCT to pull it, Britcliffe.

I would not want my son infected with AIDS with someone else [on the pill for eg?] who may not even know they are infected.

I completely agree that a needle exchange should be available in central Accy. We have our fair share of HIV affected people in this borough. John Moores University in Liverpool publish the exact figures on a yearly basis. These figures are available online.

There are a couple of things that I do disagree with though

Firstly..... your son would not become infected with AIDS. He would become infected with HIV, which is actually different. HIV eventually leads to AIDS but that may take 20-30 years if he's lucky..

Secondly.... by assuming that the person giving him HIV is on the pill, you are assuming that this person is a woman!!!! Current research will confirm that the numbers of women contracting HIV is increasing. They are catching this through sex with infected men. These studies actually show that married women have more chance of contracting HIV because they are in relationships where they feel they have no need to use condoms, and some husbands have extramarital affairs. Many of these women are from minority ethnic groups who traditionally don't have affairs. Many women in relationships involving domestic violence feel powerless to demand the use of a condom within that relationship.

If I were to advise your son on protection against HIV and other STI's, I would advise him to use a condom with every sexual contact, be they female, male or martian....

Acrylic-bob · 08-11-2005, 19:39

Like Garinda, I have watched in helpless agony as friends wasted away and died of HIV. Wonderful, lively, creative people, who lost their lives through ignorance. I also have several friends who are living with the condition, and coping wonderfully, but all are damaged by it.

I think that it is appalling in this day and age that schools are not teaching our children everything there is to know about something that could ruin their lives or even rob them of it. Earlier in this thread one school in Accrington was singled out as failing miserably in this regard, it came as NO SURPRISE to learn that it was the same school of which I myself was once a pupil...

M O U N T C A R M E L

This school failed me and my contemporary's in so many ways. How sad and infuriating to find that it is still failing the young people of Accrington. As far as I am concerned, the sooner that religionists are told to keep their peevish, tight-arsed noses out of education the better things will be for all concerned.