Sexual health

Promoting good sexual health and positive sexual experience is a key challenge for Caerphilly County Borough. There are many aspects to promoting positive sexual health including contraception, sexually transmitted infection, unintended pregnancy (especially teenage pregnancy), sexual identity, education, information and the need for appropriate services in place to address these.

The way that we feel emotionally and form relationships with others can have an impact on our sexual health.

 

Facts

Sexually Transmitted Infections occur most frequently among people under 25 years of age, although an increase in cases in this group is also reflected in the older age groups, particularly the 35-45 age group.

Consequences of inadequately treated STIs can include pelvic inflammatory disease and infertility, cervical cancer and increased susceptibility to HIV infection.

Conception rates in under 18 year olds are higher than the average for Wales.

 

Tips and Advice

Through appropriate and timely education programmes, information and access to services when required can help reduce STIs and unplanned pregnancies. There are many forms of contraception available to prevent unplanned pregnancies but only by using a condom can you reduce the risk of catching an STI.

When using a condom there are some things you need to do:

  • Use a different condom each time you have sex and oral sex
  • Make sure condoms carry the BSI kite mark, CE mark, or both. CE is the European safety standard mark
  • Always check the expiry date on the condom packet and on the foil wrapper

 

Local Contacts

All the information and local contacts for Caerphilly borough can be found in the Caerphilly Little Book. This is a small credit card sized book containing useful information about sexual health services. It was initially produced for young people but most of the services are available for all ages.  It contains a list of sexual health clinics, pharmacies participating in the Emergency Hormonal Contraception (EHC) scheme, information about where to get tested for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and information about other services including drugs, alcohol and mental health.

Caerphilly Little Book (pdf 105k)