A bitter cocktail of myths, pandemic and lack of risk perception and sex education comprehensive has led young people adReduce the use of condoms in Peruwhere only 6% of women and 14% of men always use it in their sexual relations.
This is revealed by data from a survey by the AHF Foundation (Aids Healthcare Foundation), released this Sunday on the occasion of the international condom daya day marked by calls from authorities and civil entities to change a reality that puts the public health of the country in check.
“Condom use has been declining in recent years.. It is somewhat worrying because it reveals that adolescents and young people are more exposed to HIV, sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies,” the coordinator of AHF Peru and the Andean Region, Dr. José Luis Sebastián Mesones, told Efe.
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According to the foundation’s surveys, applied to around 45,000 young people who attended rapid HIV diagnostic tests, in 2019 almost 8% of women reported always using a condom, a figure that fell to 6.5% in 2020 and 5.99% last year. The trend for men was similar and stood at 13.92% in 2021.
Sebastián assured that the obstacles to frequent, correct and consistent use of condoms are due to multiple factors, including religious convictions and “myths” related to decreased sensitivity and pleasure.
But they also influence alcohol and drug usethe lack of sex education in schools and the context generated by the covid-19 pandemic, explained the doctor.
“During the pandemic, some of the population’s behaviors have changed in terms of going out to stores or pharmacies, to going to spaces where information is provided.
People have lowered their guard, the perception of risk may have changed, and having lowered their guard, this prevention tool has been neglected,” he declared.
The figures are even more alarming in the regions of the country that are farthest from the big cities, where there is a shortage of “commercial movements and nearby health establishments”.
In these more remote areas, moreover, the age at which adolescents start having sexual relations decreases considerably.
In the jungle regions of Loreto and Ucayali, for example, 50% of adolescents start having sex before the age of 14, while at the national level it is observed that 52% of women and 66% of men started before of the 17
“The earlier, the less possibility of having access to information there is,” warned Sebastián, who insisted on the need for “actions to be carried out to provide people with knowledge about the existence of a method to avoid infections, HIV and pregnancies. unwanted”, in a country where abortion is also illegal.
For the doctor, it is urgent that citizens “stop seeing the condom as an inducer of bad actions or sin” and that they remove from this tool “all the moral and personal connotation to go directly to the issue of prevention.”
“It’s a matter of public health,” he insisted after recalling that comprehensive sex education in schools is the best strategy to reverse the numbers shown by the surveys.
According to AHF, in Peru there are approximately 91,000 people living with HIV, 99% of cases due to unprotected sexual intercourse and 68% diagnosed in patients between 20 and 39 years of age.
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