A survey of university students has discovered that more than one in ten cannot put a condom on properly, nearly a quarter wrongly believe that forms of contraception other than condoms protect from sexually transmitted infections, and over a third think that condoms have holes in that are big enough to allow HIV through.
This online survey published by the Terrence Higgins Trust and the NUS, in which over 2,200 students responded, has collated some shocking results. To imagine that more than a third of students are questioning the safety of condoms and believe them to have holes in is amazing.
However, I guess some people will be surprised as few as 10% of students can't put a condom on properly. After all, that is generally going to be the man's job, and you know how often men don't like to read the instructions first! But this is one thing that should have no shortcuts, especially since the health of more than one person is involved. Get things wrong and it could be more than yourself that encounters problems.
Sex education in schools generally focuses on the ways things work and what it means biologically. But it looks like a lot more work is needed in making information and instructions on safer sex more accessible. There is a lot of help out there for university students, but that doesn't mean that they will access it automatically and they might not even realise the help is there if they did want to know, but were afraid to ask. As much as university is a place of personal discovery, there's nothing stopping you from discovering the wrong thing. Or discovering the right thing when it's too late.
