New Zealand's youth drinking culture has led to high rates of the sexually transmissible infection chlamydia, says a Waikato sexual health expert.
A report submitted to the Health Waikato Advisory Committee today shows high rates of chlamydia transmission among under 25-year-olds in Waikato
The report shows that between February 2008 and January 2010 in Waikato, 16 percent of those under 25 who were tested were positive for chlamydia.
The report also shows that Maori were more likely to carry the disease with more than one in five young Maori women testing positive compared to one in nine non-Maori.
The report said that among the general population including those who have not been tested, estimates are that one in 10 young people are infected.
"Unfortunately, excessive drinking means people are sometimes not sure who they've had sex with," Waikato sexual health physician Jane Morgan said.
"If people don't use a condom, or have many sexual partners, the risk of getting a sexually transmitted infection increases significantly.
"The message for young people is, if you have unprotected sex, you could have chlamydia," Dr Young said.
Chlamydia often went untreated because 70 percent of people who carried the disease did not experience symptoms or know they had it, she said.
This was a major problem because if untreated chlamydia could affect both women's and men's reproductive health, leading to difficulties in falling pregnant, ectopic pregnancies and pelvic inflammatory disease in women, as well as infertility in both men and women.
