“Hi, Anouk, are you there? “ When David, a holiday sweetheart, writes to Anouk Perry this SMS, this one is a little surprised. The following text will take her breath away: “I have bad news: I am positive for STI [infection sexuellement transmissible] chlamydia. You have to get tested. I don’t know where I caught it, but I’m sorry if I spun it on you. “ The same day, the 24-year-old woman went to a laboratory, from which she left with a urine test to be performed the next morning. The result falls: it is positive.
“STIs, I thought it only happened to other people. In my entourage, we don’t talk about it, or else it’s just for fun. We find it disgusting ”, remembers the one who quickly becomes obsessed with a question: Did David contaminate her, or is it the other way around? She contacts her former partners, questions the medical profession. His investigation becomes a podcast called “Who gave me chlamydia?” “, available on the Nouvelles Ecoutes platform. Since then, she has received numerous testimonies from young people affected by this disease. Anouk Perry contributed to free speech on a subject as taboo as it is recurring.
“Chlamydia and gonococcal infections have been on the rise since the early 2000s”, explains Florence Lot, from the infectious diseases department of Public Health France (SpF). According to data from SpF, between 2017 and 2019, the number of diagnoses of chlamydia infection increased by 29%. This progression is more marked among women aged 15 to 24 (+ 41%) and among men aged 15 to 29 (+ 45%). The number of gonorrhea diagnoses increased by 21% over the same period.
The most recent data, which relate to the year 2020, show a drop in the number of cases… directly linked to the drop in the number of screenings. According to the latest SpF bulletin, screening for bacterial STIs in a free information, screening and diagnostic center fell by 30% in 2020 compared to 2019. If this decrease is, in part, linked to the closure of centers during the first confinement, the activity never resumed as before, worries Florence Lot: “Who says late screening means late diagnosis, and a greater circulation of these infections, with a snowball effect. “
Risk of infertility
These infections, which affect both men and women, are spread during unprotected sex, oral sex, vaginal or anal sex. Gonorrhea, also called hot-pissing, is caused by painful urination or discharge from the penis or rectum in men – it is usually asymptomatic in women. The signs of chlamydia infection are quite similar, but only appear in a small proportion of those infected.
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