Sex, drugs and alcohol (that got your attention)

Posted on May 21, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized |

Young adults in Europe use drink and drugs to boost their chances of getting laid. Hard to believe, but there you go.

So long term and emergency contraception might be a good idea. Long term contraception is still little used in the UK.

An FPA survey has found that most emergency contraception is now purchased from pharmacies, which are obviously more convenient in location and opening hours than many clinics. You still can’t buy it in advance (just in case) or get someone to buy it for you: see here And it can cost around £25 which does reduce its use by teens and lower income women, the very people with high rates of unplanned pregnancy. A recent informal study of a one in five sample of UK Primary Care Trusts found only 17% referenced free emergency contraception from some or all pharmacies.

So why are we so interested in it? After all, the UKs Total Fertility Rate is, though rising, still below the replacement level of two. In practice, however, our “Stop at Two” recommendation is a maximum, not a target. The birth rate may be higher in, say, Bangladesh, but the life time environmental impact of a UK birth is 35 times higher than a Bangladeshi one. And early births accelerate population growth. Around one third of pregnancies in the UK are unplanned, rising to 90% for teenagers. Teenage pregnancies therefore seem to be a priority for environmental reasons, as well as the widely recognised social and personal costs.

While the government’s Teenage Pregnancy Strategy has had some success, with rates falling by up to 40% in some areas, results have varied widely.

Government analysis has found the key factors in reducing teenage pregnancy to be:

comprehensive sex relationships education
available and publicised sexual health service advice
a well resourced youth service providing leisure facilities and a focus on addressing sexual health and substance misuse
targetted interventions on high risk groups such as looked-after children
strong local leadership, multi-agency partnering and frontline skill training.

There is undoubtedly room for improvement in many of these factors at local level. For more, see Teenage Pregnancy Unit