The French population generally uses contraception less. This is one of the many lessons delivered, on Wednesday November 13, by the vast survey “Context of sexualities in France”, carried out at the initiative of the ANRS-Infectious Diseases in conjunction with the National Institute of Health and medical research (Inserm). According to data collected from November 2022 to December 2023 from 21,259 people in mainland France, the use of a means of contraception – all types combined – during the very first sexual intercourse is particularly falling among women, going from a peak from 98.3% in 2004-2006 to 87.2% in 2019-2023. The curve is the same for men, with, however, a slight increase over the past ten years, to stand at 92.3% in 2019-2023.
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Regarding the more specific use of condoms during the very first sexual intercourse, it reaches, in 2019-2023, 75.2% among women and 84.5% among men. After experiencing an explosion between the 1970s and the 2000s, the use of contraceptive methods at the time of entry into sexual life is therefore undergoing erosion, despite stagnation since the 2000s at a fairly high level.
“Few people started their sexual life between 2019 and 2023 among those surveyed, so these results remain to be confirmed, particularly among women, but the drop in condom use is a warning signalunderlines Caroline Moreau, epidemiologist at Inserm, who led the survey alongside sociologist Nathalie Bajos and demographer Armelle Andro. This shows that more attention needs to be paid to education and sexual health. » This relationship to prevention remains true for all ages, since, in 2023, only 49.4% of women and 52.6% of men used a condom during their first sexual intercourse with a partner met in the twelve recent months.
An increase in unwanted pregnancies
Among the people questioned, nearly 6,000 agreed to take a self-sample (vaginal or urinary), which allowed the researchers to evaluate for the first time the prevalence of infections. Mycoplasma genitalium – a bacteria causing a sexually transmitted infection (STI) – in France, by 3.1% in women and 1.3% in men. Infections with Chlamydia trachomatis are estimated at 0.9% among women and 0.6% among men, figures comparable to those of 2006. These data tend to show, in a context of increase in STIs at European level, that these trends are not only concern highly exposed populations and not the entire population. People who have had more than one partner in twelve months have a higher risk than those with one or only one partner.
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