Health Info – When too much love goes wrong. Health problems after unprotected love

1. Preliminary data shows that in 2022 in the Republic of Moldova, 1201 patients with syphilis and 412 patients with gonococcal infection were recorded. The figures are in a slight and continuous decline in recent years, but remain alarming for specialists. The highest number of syphilis cases in the last decade was recorded in 2015, when 1,912 cases were reported, almost 30 percent more than last year. The number of gonorrhea cases has halved in the last ten years, from 1000 patients registered in 2014, to just over four hundred in 2022.

Compared to the European Union average, the Republic of Moldova records a disastrous situation – six times higher – in terms of the total notification rate of syphilis cases per hundred thousand inhabitants. If the European average shows that in 2019 there were 7.4 cases of syphilis per hundred thousand inhabitants, then in the Republic of Moldova 54.1 cases per hundred thousand inhabitants were treated.

We have almost five times more syphilis than the “leaders” Great Britain, Iceland, Ireland, Malta or Spain, where a rate of more than 10 cases per hundred thousand inhabitants was recorded. This is not to compare ourselves with Croatia, Estonia, Slovenia and Romania where this number is three cases per hundred thousand speakers, according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.

Syphilis is more common among teenagers

Doctors are worried about the increase in the number of cases of syphilis among teenagers. In 2021, the infection rate among 18-19-year-olds is more than three times higher than the general rate. What is sadder is that it increased by almost 30 percent in one year, from 123 cases per hundred thousand inhabitants in 2020 to 177 cases per hundred thousand inhabitants in 2021.

The same serious situation is recorded with gonorrhea. In 2021 the rate of gonorrhea cases among adolescents (92 cases per hundred thousand inhabitants) was almost four times higher compared to the general rate (20 cases per hundred thousand inhabitants).

Experts blame these worrying statistics on limited sex education. Galina Leșco, director of the “Neovita” youth-friendly resource center for health services, says that in the last four years there has been a decrease in the use of condoms among teenagerswhich has led to an increase in the incidence of sexually transmitted infections among young people.

“Today it is avoided to talk about condoms in schools so as not to disturb the parents, and general things are talked about HIV. We cannot say that young people receive complex sexual education in schools in which they are informed how to protect themselves effectively. And yet we must note that teenagers have become more responsible. A study shows that last year fewer teenagers engaged in sexual relations at a very early age.
If in 2014 almost 19 percent reported sexual relations, i.e. every fifth 15-year-old teenager, then in 2022 their number drops to 12 percent. Among 17-year-old teenagers, the number of those who have already had a sexual experience remains at the level of 30 percent”, says Galina Leșco.

The director of the “Neovita” Center also added that the trend of delaying the start of sexual life among young people is an international one. Teenagers have more knowledge and information and don’t just do it out of curiosity like they used to. She noted that girls have also begun to better protect themselves against unwanted pregnancies. This fact also emerges from statistics that recorded 26 births per thousand girls aged 15-19, a figure almost five times higher than the average in the European Union.

Men go to the venereologist more often

Although sex involves a relationship between two people, men are the ones who go to the doctor more often with health problems left by a bout of unprotected love. According to statistics, their general number is almost 15 percent higher than that of women, but there are age categories when the difference is even greater.

In the last five years, the rate of men who became infected with syphilis was between 48 and 67 cases per hundred thousand inhabitants, while for women it varied between 34 and 47 cases per hundred thousand inhabitants. Gynecologist Galina Leșco puts these differences on the stereotypes and prejudices that still prevail in society and that are more tolerant in relation to men when it comes to sexual relations. “The community is more permissive with men and accepts intercourse as an accumulation of experience and the woman must be a virgin“, the expert explains the situation.

According to Galina Leșco, there are also differences in the discovery of disease cases. If prophylactic testing, at employment or for pregnancy, predominates in women, then in men syphilis is discovered more often on request following direct referrals from patients.