Teenagers and young men are putting their lives at risk and saying no to condoms in vastly increased numbers. Results from the 2004 Gay Auckland Periodic Sex Survey found well over half of young men aged 15-24 are not using condoms with their regular partners, compared to just over one-third in 2002. Younger respondents were also more likely to agree with the statements "new HIV treatments are simple and have few side effects" (23.2%), "a man who knows he has HIV would tell me he was positive before we had sex" (30.5%), and "if a man I was going to have sex with told me he was HIV positive I would not want to have sex with him" (75.1%). The new figures also suggest that the more partners you have, the more likely you are to have unsafe sex. "Clearly the more often men change sexual partners the more likely it is that they will be encouraged by someone, or some situation, into dropping their guard and not using condoms for anal sex," says AIDS Foundation Research Director Tony Hughes. "The important response, of course, is to get straight back into using condoms, and then identify what it was that made them break their safe sex routine in the first place."
Credit: GayNZ.com News Staff
First published: Tuesday, 14th December 2004 - 12:00pm