A SERIOUS TALK: YOUTH AND VENEREAL DISEASES

Nowadays we often hear that an increasing number of people are taken ill with sexually transmitted diseases.

There has been a dramatic increase in venereal diseases over the recent years. At present, young people, often high school students, are becoming the main carriers of these diseases. Today it is no longer anything extraordinary to contract a venereal disease, so more people nowadays remain cool to statistics showing an ever growing number of venereal patients. And this has an impact on our life.

With the above upsurge in venereal diseases, it would seem natural that this issue should become an object of public concern, and the authorities should take immediate action to deal with it. However, the situation has even aggravated as compared with the early 90s. Previously, there was considerable assistance provided for patients, who received the necessary hospital treatment. Nowadays hospitals are overcrowded and in short supply of medicine, which resulted in an increasing number of outpatients (sometimes without proper treatment control). Usually such home treatment is not properly done, so the disease is just suppressed for a while. This may have a hazardous effect on other, so far healthy people and their future children.

To find out what young people think about venereal diseases, a group of students of the Institute of Management conducted a sociological survey. The survey involved 50 people including 35 boys (70 percent) and 15 girls (30 percent). As the findings reveal, 66 percent of the respondents think the present increase in venereal diseases to be one of the most urgent social problems, 16 percent believe otherwise, and 18 percent found it hard to answer.

Many of the youth involved (86 percent) approve of premarital sex, 4 percent disapprove of it, and about 10 percent found it hard to answer.

It turned out, however, that many respondents are unaware of what safe sex is. Since a respondent could mark off a few variants offered in the questionnaire, we can show the distributions of answers by their importance. Going first (over 50 percent of answers) is using contraceptives and remedies for sexually transmitted diseases. 42 percent believe safe sex is a relationship between man and woman with no sex involved. 40 percent think no sex is safe unless condoms are used, 12 percent indicate contraceptives. 6 percent are positive safe sex is masturbation.

Answering the question “What is a sexual relationship, do you think?”, the respondents fell into three groups. 96 percent answered “sexual act”, 2 percent believe it is foreplay, the remaining 2 percent chose “masturbation”. 28 percent of the young people said they had a permanent sex partner; 40 percent said “no”; 32 percent chose the variant “hard to answer”. 4 percent of the boys think it is women who should take care to protect themselves from venereal diseases; 8 percent of the girls, on the contrary, are positive that only men are responsible; 84 percent chose the variant “both equally”; and 4 percent found it difficult to answer.

The answers to the question “What would you do if you got infected from your sex partner?” reveal that 2 percent of the boys would sue their partner; 32 percent of the male respondents would threaten her with physical violence; about 10 percent of both boys and girls would educate their partner on the issue; about 54 percent of the respondents would help cure the disease, while 12 percent would do nothing at all.

The majority of the respondents (56 percent) think that youth should be informed about venereal diseases from the age of 14; 44 percent suggest the age of 12; and 2 percent the age of 16. 50 percent of the interviewed prefer to be informed by doctors; 22 percent read special literature; 14 percent prefer to have their questions answered by their friends and acquaintances, 8 percent - by a teacher they trust and only 4 percent - by their parents. Interestingly, 56 percent of the youth failed to mark off correctly the sexually transmitted diseases included in the offered list of diseases.

Answering the question “What are the main reasons for contracting a venereal disease?”, 40 percent of the respondents indicated “promiscuity”; 24 percent chose “prostitution and drug addiction”; 12 percent believe that a contracted venereal disease results from a lifestyle; the same number of the respondents think the key reason to be a failure to observe personal hygiene; 8 percent see the reason in scarce information about venereal diseases and their effects. 54 percent of the youth sympathize with venereal patients, 30 percent are indifferent and 14 percent feel a distaste for them.

Now take another look at the survey findings. What do you see? Unawareness, egoism, indifference ... And all that in our relatively small city where hundreds of residents are HIV-infected by now.

Zhenya Kenarskaya (based on the findings of the sociological survey conducted by students S.Eliseev, M.Osipov and D.Ageev, Institute of Management)

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