Clinic treating 12-year-olds for sex diseases

A sexual disease clinic is regularly treating children as young as 12 for serious conditions.

The range of diseases affecting children in the 12-14 age group include genital warts, chlamydia and herpes.

Dr Cath Becker, head of the clinic in Masterton, said she sees cases of genital warts daily.

She said: "When I see how sexually active people are becoming, and at such a young age, I feel anxious to inform them about the risks.

"Pregnancy has always been the biggie, but sexual diseases are just not freely talked about."

Dr Becker said there is excellent resource material for teaching sexual health but she believes some teachers and school boards are reluctant to use it and teach in the graphic way that teenagers respond to.

A new district health board booklet on youth health allocates two pages to sexual health but Dr Becker said it was too delicate in its message and needed to be more hard-hitting.

She said: "Teenagers are much more savvy to the world of sex than we give them credit for."

She said a "shock box" naming the diseases and symptoms would have been helpful and rejects claims that young people are getting too much explicit information.

The age of sexual consent is 16 and Dr Becker said while she does not condone underage sex, if it does happen, teenagers must know to use condoms.

"Not all sexually transmitted infections can be stopped by condoms, but they go a long way to reducing the risk of skin-to-skin infection," she said.

"You would be surprised how many young people say they use condoms, but when you question them further they obviously don't and have no idea how to put a condom on."

A University of Otago study last year found one in eight pregnant women aged under 25 in New Zealand had chlamydia. The infection causes problems for babies' lungs and eyes.

The horror diseases 20 years ago were gonorrhoea and syphilis but antibiotics have helped rein in these infections. Dr Becker may see around two cases of gonorrhoea in her surgery a year, and syphilis is almost non-existent.

- nzpa