As the youth of today simply will not remember those scary adverts back in the 80s, that warned us all about the threat of HIV and AIDS in the world, they have been able to grow up in a completely different way from us. In fact, they are usually completely ignorant where health is concerned and this is especially the case where sexually transmitted diseases and infections are under consideration.
They may well receive a small amount of knowledge about STIs in their biology courses in school - but it would seem that nothing has been hard-hitting enough to prevent them from being responsible for a huge rise in the number of new STI cases being recorded.
Every year, more and more younger people are having to find out where they might take a Chlamydia Test, or even worse, an HIV test. Even the STIs that are seen as being rather Medieval, e.g. syphilis and gonorrhoea, have seen a resurgence in the rates of infection, as the youth have not been educated sufficiently to warn them of the potential dangers.
Many of these diseases can actually be life-threatening. We all know the dangers of HIV whereby your immune system can be depleted to the point of full blown AIDS; but syphilis is no walk in the park either - in fact, people have been known to go completely mad with this illness and it can prove to be fatal.
More health education needs to be introduced into secondary schools as soon as possible. Subject the children to the same type of advertising campaigns as we had back in 1987 and this may well succeed in reducing rates of sexually transmitted infections.
