We should all think more about our sexual health.
With the internet and the advent of mobile dating apps, we’ve never had it so good…or so much.
But there has been a rise in serious sexually transmitted infections like chlamydia and even HIV.
Now there’s a calculator that shows how many sexual partners you’ve potentially been exposed to – and it hammers the message home.
Dr Felix, a UK online doctor service, put the tool together which lets you add in your home city (only Dublin and Cork in Ireland, we’re afraid) and the place your partner lives – along with a box to enter the number of sexual partners you’ve had (be truthful, gents).
It includes an interactive feature that you can see your potential risk of getting some of the most common sexually transmitted infections based on the city where you live.
It’s all based on the theory of ‘sex degrees of separation’ – but works in data and formulas from the World Health Organisation, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and other government data from the ONS.
So, if you’re a London couple who have both had 10 sexual partners (which this study claimed was the ‘ideal’ number of sexual partners to have before you settle down) the results are quite sobering.
It means a potential sexual exposure to 1,111,110 partners – that’s more than 10% of every man and woman in London.
Worryingly it also means a 19.18% risk of having caught Gonorrhoea and a 16.91% risk of Syphilis.
For more information on STIs in Ireland, check out thinkcontraception.ie.
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