'Britons have unsafe sex abroad'

'Britons have unsafe sex abroad'
http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5i9SIT31NtbF-mM6i6H3X5viVs1aA

Around a fifth of young Britons claim to have had sex with at least one new partner abroad over a five-year period, a research has shown.

The survey suggests that many young people in their teens and early 20s are throwing caution to the wind when it comes to holiday romance. Almost a quarter of men and one in six women between the ages of 16 and 24 said they had experienced sex with someone new while overseas.

Typically, men had two partners abroad in the five years covered by the survey, and women one. A few unusually active men had as many as 13.

Half of those questioned said their holiday partners were British, and more than one in three had sex with a person from another European country. Choosing a British or European partner was thought to minimise the chances of HIV infection, researchers were told.

But the young people were seemingly unaware of the risk of picking up other sexually transmitted diseases.

The findings emerge from interviews with a random sample of 12,000 men and women aged 16 to 44 who took part in the 2000 National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (NATSAL).

Just under 14% of all the men questioned between May 1999 and February 2001 and just over 7% of the women said they had had sex with a new partner abroad in the previous five years.

This type of liaison accounted for a 10th of all men's partnerships and one in 20 of all women's.

The researchers, led by Dr Catherine Mercer from the Centre for Sexual Health and HIV Research at University College London, reported their findings in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections.

They wrote: "A substantial minority of young, unmarried people form new sexual partnerships abroad. Those who have new partners abroad are likely to have higher-risk sexual lifestyles more generally, and to be at higher risk of sexually transmitted infections."

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