STI stats in Ireland

The numbers don't lie.

You've heard it a million times - wear a condom to prevent STIs and pregnancy. Sometimes though when the hormones are raging, when you just couldn't be bothered, when one or both partners are intoxicated, or when one or both of you really really don't want to wear one, the condom never seems to make it into the equation.

Here are the latest STI facts from the HPSC (Health Protection Surveillance Centre). The report shows that there were 10,834 notifications of STIs in 2009. Men accounted for 51.7% of all notifications and women for 47.1%.

Next time you consider skipping the rubber, think about these facts:

Number of STI notifications in Ireland by infection and gender (2009)

STI	Male	Female	Unknown	Total
Genital warts	1236	1029	18	2283
Chlamydia	2303	3388	90	5781
Gonorrohea	341	88	5	434
Genital Herpes	171	295	3	469
Infectious Hepatitis B	6	3	0	9
NSU	1142	65	2	1209
Syphillis	405	156	9	570
Trichomoniasis	1	76	2	79
TOTALS	5605	5100	129	10834
% of total STIs	51.7%	47.1%	1.2%	-

Chlamydia was the most common STI accounting for 53.4% (n=5,781) of all STI notifications.

The largest increase in the number of notifications was seen for
syphilis, from 312 notifications in 2008 to 570 in 2009, an increase of 82.7% year on year.

Increases were also noted for genital warts (+7%), genital herpes (+19%), and Trichomoniasis (+12.9%).

Almost two-thirds (61.4%) of notifications were among those aged 20 to 29 years. This age group accounted for the majority of notifications for each STI, except syphilis and trichomoniasis.

To read the full report visit hpsc.ie.