The report indicates that more than half of young people between the ages of 15 and 19 claim to have had at least one sexual encounter involving penetration.
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Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among young people, especially adolescents, are on the rise in Spain. At the launch of the Ministry of Health’s new campaign to prevent sexually transmitted infections among young people, the seriousness of the problem was revealed.
Mar Vera Garcia, president of the SEIMC STI research group, explains that, according to the latest survey report in 2020, “more than half of young people aged 15 to 19 years, up to 52%”, said they had had at least one penetrative sexual contact. “We’re seeing an increasingly early onset of sexual activity,” Vera says.
With regard to various STIs such as syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia, young people between 20 and 24 years of age are the most vulnerable group. Regarding HIV, “in 2022, 2,956 new diagnoses were registered, of which 10.6% are among those under 25 years of age,” emphasizes Victoria Hernando Sebastian, researcher at the National Center for Epidemiology. “We see that the majority of these new diagnoses are in the 20 to 24 years old category (88.6%), and 10% are between 15 and 19 years old.”
