The Rise of STD Cases in Europe: Are Young People Taking Risks with Their Sexual Health?

Perhaps, he says, the point is that things never really go wrong, that the consequences are not big enough. “So you quickly think: oh, a cure, just a bit annoying, but I’m not going to die.” Sex without a condom is normal in the group of friends of the twenty-year-old biomedical sciences student. STDs and the associated antibiotic treatment are taken for granted.

Or not, because he and his friends rarely get tested for an STD. “Sometimes I think: I have to do it. But it’s such a hassle,” he says. The student is sitting in a café on the Roeterseiland campus of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). He wears a polo shirt, has a laptop on his lap and is “a bit single”.

The number of Europeans with an STD is increasing rapidly, it became apparent last Thursday research of the European Health Service ECDC. In 2022, 48 percent more cases of gonorrhea were registered than the year before. For syphilis this was 34 percent and for chlamydia 16 percent. In the Netherlands, more than 10,000 infections with gonorrhea were diagnosed in 2022, an increase of about 33 percent. Only in Spain were there more (almost 23,000).

Rapidly changing sexual contacts are normal in his group of friends, says the twenty-year-old student. But things really get going in Bali and Cape Town. These are popular destinations for twenty-somethings (who can afford it) to get away for a few months. “I hear many stories from friends who often have unsafe sex there. Travelers from all kinds of countries meet there, so I can imagine that STDs will spread faster.”

Much more testing in the Netherlands

There are also many varying sexual contacts in Fleur’s (23) group of friends. There is an empty cup with leftover coffee on the table in front of her. Wieske (23) and Alex (21) sit on either side. All three are single. “I know plenty of people who have someone else at least once a month. And they often have unprotected sex,” says Fleur. She has never had an STD herself. Wieske does. “I’m quite lax when it comes to condom use. Often neither of them realizes it and then it just doesn’t happen. I think preventing pregnancy is more important than preventing an STD. So since having an IUD, I have become even more lax.”

Alex always has a condom in his bag. And uses it too. “But half of my male friends don’t. That’s not on purpose, but they are just more comfortable with it.” And when it comes to testing for STDs? “I personally don’t know any boys who test, only girls.”

Sexual education in the Netherlands has become worse

However, much more STD testing is carried out in the Netherlands than in other European countries. This distorts the absolute figures from the European research, says Hanna Bos, infection control doctor at Soa Aids Nederland. “You cannot deny the rise of gonorrhea in the Netherlands, but it is not as big a problem here as in certain Eastern European countries, for example.” In the Netherlands, syphilis is “concentrated” in the group of men who have sex with men, says Bos. And the number of chlamydia cases has increased in an absolute sense, but not in a relative sense, if you look at the number of chlamydia tests administered.

According to her, the rise of gonorrhea is worrying. “It can cause very unpleasant symptoms, such as inflammation in the lower abdomen, epididymitis, and fertility problems. And if you get it in your eye, you can get an eye infection that can destroy your cornea.”

Sexual education

“We don’t know exactly why the number of diagnoses has increased,” says Bos. “But there are a number of signals that worry us. Firstly, condom use among young people has declined alarmingly over the past five years. The norm sometimes seems to have become: no condom, but testing. Our impression is also that sexuality education in the Netherlands has become worse; Young people are dissatisfied with what they learn at school about sex and everything surrounding it. Good knowledge about how to prevent an STD and what to do if you have an STD is lacking.”

And there is something else: the attention for STDs seems to be waning. Previously, Soa Aids Nederland received money from the government for campaigns, but the government cut back on that subsidy in 2011. Bos: “We need another smart campaign, evidence basedwhich is evaluated and repeated every year.”

STDs have become “more normal”, Fleur sees, in the café on the UvA campus. “If you had an STD a few years ago, it was immediately a shame. But if you have an STD now, no one will be surprised.” Wieske even sees a small bright spot in the increase in the number of diagnoses. “STDs are of course a consequence of unprotected sex with many different partners, but on the other hand, the increase shows that people apparently feel free to have sex with whoever they want.”

The full names of the students are known to the editors.

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2024-03-10 16:58:48
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