samedaydoctor sexual health in the news
Genital warts vaccine push launched
A genital warts vaccine awareness programme has advised would-be lovers to make sure that romance is the only infectious thing on the cards this Valentine’s Day.
A genital warts vaccine has been available for four years but is not available through the NHS…. HPV vaccine Cervarix is currently administered through the schools programme but it only protects girls against cervical cancer and leaves them at risk of developing genital warts. Nine out of 10 doctors admit they would tell their own daughters to ignore the NHS option and go for Gardasil, an alternative vaccine which is more expensive but protects against both conditions.
Read more about the genital warts vaccine…
Safety first message for sexual health
The Union of Students in Ireland will distribute 40,000 sexual health awareness packs across the country throughout the week. Each SHAG pack has a condom and information on contraception to enable students to make safe choices when it comes to their sexual health. Read more…
Photo: rlv.zcache.com
Sexual disease cases soar in West Midlands
CASES of the one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases soared in the West Midlands during the last decade, new figures show.
Genital warts increased by 36 per cent from 2000- 2009. Nationally, NHS spends £50 million each year treating the disease and other resulting infections.
The best aphrodisiacs: money, alcohol, chocolate…
The best way to get someone into bed is to touch their most sensitive organ: the belly! What works is extravagance and alcohol. If the food looks and tastes expensive and combines a knock-out punch you’re getting there. Flowers also help. As does a bit of spectacle. We’ve been asked by the Museum of London to recreate James Graham’s Celestial Bed.
Dr James Graham (1745-1794) was a medical entrepreneur, quack and pioneer in sex therapy with a genius for spectacle.
Graham’s bed was enormously successful. Fashionable London flocked to patronise his Temple of Hymen and hear Graham’s titillating lectures on sexual health. His recommendations were filtered through metaphors and grandiloquent rhetoric.
Sadly Graham’s spending outpaced what he was able to earn and by 1784 he was forced to sell most of his possessions including the celestial bed. It’s been lost to London until the recreation at Valentine’s this year. No-one knows exactly what the original celestial bed looks like so we are working with illustrator Emma Rios to design the external structure.
Read more about the celestial bed…
Photo: Chocolate may have aphrodisiac properties AFP
Girls decide: putting girls’ sexual and reproductive health at the heart of development
There is a growing global consensus that girls are central to global development. Yet issues relating to girls’ sexuality and their sexual and reproductive rights continue to be largely neglected.
Girls Decide, a new initiative from the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), highlights the importance of girls’ and young women’s sexual and reproductive lives for both individual and global development, and aims to ensure governments around the world to adopt policies that work for girls.
Girls Decide launches this week with six short films that share the stories of six girls from around the world and their journeys to make informed decisions about sex, pregnancy, abortion and relationships. The initiative will be launched at an event in London on 16 February attended by UK Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development, Stephen O’Brien, MP. Read more…
