Teen drinking linked to chlamydia

The lowering of the drinking age may be a factor in the alarming increase in young people being diagnosed with chlamydia, a sexual health expert says.

Dunedin Sexual Health Clinic leader Jill McIlraith said young people having unsafe sex when drunk were partly responsible for the 30 per cent increase of the sexually transmitted disease in Dunedin from 2002 to 2003.

"We are increasingly seeing young teenagers coming in for emergency contraception who can't even remember when or who they had sex with, they were so drunk.

"Changes in alcohol policy have been well documented in the United States as a contributing factor to the rise of STD rates," she said.

Most of the 700 people diagnosed with chlamydia last year were under the age of 24, including a small but growing number under the age of 15.

Chlamydia, the second most common STD in New Zealand after the warts virus, often showed no symptoms, but could be easily treated with a single dose of antibiotics.

Long-term effects of chlamydia included infertility, ectopic pregnancies and chronic pelvic pain.

"What we really need to do is focus on prevention. The first step is realising that some 14 and 15-year-olds are having sex and most 19 to 24-year-olds definitely are ... and we need to be vigorously pushing the safe-sex message within families, schools, clinics and universities."

- NZPA