Company behind app says no personal information is collected but experts warn of ‘how easily’ data can be hacked
Yudara Kularathne came up with the idea for an AI-driven app when a friend was worried about a bump on their penis.
Kularathne was then a consultant physician in Singapore in 2019, but he saw the potential for an app that could instantly identify a suspected sexually transmitted infection from a photo of male genitalia.
Continue reading...Daye’s product doubles as PCR test for chlamydia, gonorrhoea and other common infections
A tampon is being repurposed to screen for sexually transmitted infections, with the at-home test aiming to encourage more women to seek treatment.
The gynaecological health startup Daye has launched an STI diagnostic tampon, which uses a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test to check for chlamydia, gonorrhoea, trichomonas, mycoplasma and ureaplasma, with the tampon used in place of a swab or speculum.
Continue reading...Only a third of countries with climate crisis plans include access to sexual, maternal and newborn health services, UNFPA report finds
Only a third of countries include sexual and reproductive health in their national plans to tackle the climate crisis, the UN has warned.
Of the 119 countries that have published plans, only 38 include access to contraception, maternal and newborn health services and just 15 make any reference to violence against women, according to a report published by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and Queen Mary University of London on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Johanson was venerated as a forthright educator who filled voids left by the absence of sex ed curricula at US and Canadian schools
Sex educator Sue Johanson, who once declared that “horny is a beautiful thing”, has died at the age of 93 after more than two decades of giving frank advice to audiences in Canada and the US.
Johanson gained an international audience with her plainspoken guidance to Canadians on her radio and TV programme Sunday Night Sex Show – and then Americans on her Talk Sex programme.
Continue reading...UKHSA figures also show gonorrhoea diagnoses rose by 50% to 82,600 – the most since records began in 1918
Cases of syphilis were at their highest level in 75 years in England last year while gonorrhoea cases reached a record high, figures show.
The UK Health Security Agency is urging people to use condoms, calling them “the best line of defence”, and advises people to go for a test if they have recently had unprotected sex.
Continue reading...Exclusive: National survey of young people also finds fewer than half used a condom during their latest sexual experience
More young Australians are sexually active than in previous years and, while many of them report positive experiences, a national survey of high school students found condom use is falling and there are still high rates of unwanted sex.
The seventh federally funded national survey of Australian secondary students and sexual health on Thursday published findings of its survey of 6,841 students from years 9 to 12 in government, Catholic and independent schools throughout 2021.
Continue reading...President hails ‘revolution for contraception’ as government seeks to curb STIs and unwanted pregnancies
The French president has said condoms will be made available for free in pharmacies for 18- to 25-year-olds in an attempt to reduce unwanted pregnancies among young people.
“It’s a small revolution for contraception,” Emmanuel Macron announced during a health debate with young people in Fontaine-le-Comte, a suburb of Poitiers in western France.
Continue reading...Incontinence, bleeding and STIs among consequences, say two surgeons, who want doctors to raise the topic with patients
Women in the UK are suffering injuries and other health problems as a result of the growing popularity of anal sex among straight couples, two NHS surgeons have warned.
The consequences include incontinence and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) as well as pain and bleeding because they have experienced bodily trauma while engaging in the practice, the doctors write in an article in the British Medical Journal.
Continue reading...Few sexually transmitted infection test kits available online meet official standards, BMJ study finds
Patients are being put at risk in the UK because very few sexually transmitted infection (STI) tests offered online meet official standards, experts have warned.
The NHS provides free in-person tests for STIs via its network of sexual health and genitourinary medicine clinics. Patients can also order tests via the internet from both NHS-commissioned and private providers, a practice that has become increasingly popular during the pandemic.
Continue reading...With gags, tunes and dance, The Family Sex Show celebrates sexual pleasure, equality and independence. What is there to be embarrassed about, asks theatre-maker Josie Dale-Jones
‘I remember the tampon dipped in Ribena,” says Josie Dale-Jones, her fingertips pressed together as if holding on to the string. “The way it swelled up immediately.” In school, Dale-Jones recalls her sex and relationships education as being “near to non-existent”. There was the purple-soaked tampon, the classic condom rolled on to a banana and the “general fear-mongering” of pictures of STIs pinned up on a board. “But never a mention of why you might want to have sex,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Never anything about empathy or pleasure, or how any of it might impact other people.”
With a team of eight performers, Dale-Jones is making a show about sex and relationships for ages five and above. Accompanied by workshops and panel talks, The Family Sex Show tackles topics including boundaries, gender, relationships and masturbation. Through a series of artistic responses and conversations, the group want to help make it easier for anyone, of any age, to talk about these sticky, tricky topics. “I don’t know another subject that we only talk about once and then we tick it off as if it’s done,” Dale-Jones says. “The learning is never over.”
Continue reading...There has been a sharp drop in one-off encounters, researchers say, but more people are enjoying friends with benefits and getting experimental in bed
A one-night stand, people used to say, is like a short story: if it is any good, you want it to go on for longer; if it isn’t, you could have done with 15 minutes’ more sleep. To which the retort is: sure – but a lot of people really like short stories.
A lot of people, in the pre-pandemic days, used to really like one-night stands, too. The sex therapist Jenny Keane hosts a wide-ranging sex chat through her Instagram account. On it, one woman wrote appreciatively: “The sex is purely focused on pleasure. You’re not thinking about your relationship dynamics, them not doing the dishes. It’s about being served and cared for physically. It can be a very empowering and beautiful thing.”
Continue reading...Monika was too busy with her young family to join the early protests against Poland’s strict abortion laws. But when she became pregnant with her fourth child, she realised she had to act
It is Saturday afternoon, and the centre of Chełm, a Polish city on the Ukrainian border, is empty except for one woman and her toddler. A monument to “the fallen sons” of the 1920 Polish-Soviet war marks the middle of the market square, surrounded by two churches, a few closed restaurants, and a boarded-up wooden booth with a sign reading, “cheap footwear”. The Catholic Basilica – a former Eastern Orthodox church – dominates the landscape and, locals say, the social life of the town.
Chełm is in one of the poorest areas in Poland, a stronghold of the ruling nationalist Law and Justice party, where the birthrate is -6.1 and people in their 60s comprise the largest age group. The city – once among Poland’s most religiously and ethnically diverse, with a pre-2nd?second world war population split evenly between Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews – was the site of one of the first postwar anti-Jewish Pogroms and, more recently, among the first local councils to declare itself an “LGBT-free zone.”
Continue reading...Aspen Institute’s New Voices want donors to exercise humility and trust those receiving grants to know what their communities need
Aid donors are being urged to revolutionise the way money is spent to move away from colonial ideas and create meaningful change.
Ahead of a two-day conference this week, activists from Africa, Asia and Latin America have called on public and private global health donors – including governments, the United Nations, private philanthropists and international organisations – to prioritise funding for programmes driven by the needs of the community involved, rather than dictated by preconceived objectives.
Continue reading...Women have long been taught to be ashamed of their vulvas, with increasing numbers turning to cosmetic surgery in pursuit of genital ‘perfection’. But a new generation is fighting back
When Florence Schechter opened the Vagina Museum – the world’s first museum dedicated to gynaecological anatomy – in London in 2019, it was partly a response to a dramatic rise in labiaplasty surgery. Instances of such surgery more than doubled in the first decade of this century, then carried on climbing. Zoe Williams, the spokesperson for the museum (who shares my name), says part of the problem is that most women have not seen other vulvas. “Quite a lot of people have never even seen their own, so it’s hard to have a concept of what’s normal. Certainly, throughout art history, the pictures of nude women very seldom had any protruding labia; you just had a neat little cleft.”
Labiaplasty is surgery to alter the appearance of the vulva – generally by trying to reduce the size of the labia minora, the inner genital lips, so that they don’t hang below the labia majora, the outer ones. The reasons for such surgery are not solely cosmetic – they could be related to childbirth, or chafing during sport – yet the rise is staggering. The number of labiaplasty surgeries in 2016 was up 45% on 2015 – the biggest growth of any cosmetic surgery procedure, according to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.
Continue reading...After seeing a woman die in childbirth, Liyatu Ayuba stepped in and has now delivered 118 babies in a community cut off from public health services
Having watched a woman and her baby die needlessly after being refused admission to a hospital over a lack of money, Liyatu Ayuba wanted to never let it happen again.
The 62-year-old is one of Nigeria’s nearly 3 million internally displaced people (IDPs) – driven out of their homes by the violence of the Boko Haram Islamist militants. Ayuba fled Gwoza in the north-eastern state of Borno in 2011 with her family. After her husband was killed by Boko Haram and her teenage son badly wounded, she went to the makeshift Durumi 1 IDP camp, in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, where about 500 families live.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Front Line Defenders report says rights defenders working in sex industry face ‘targeted attacks’ around the world
Sex worker activists are among the most at risk defenders of human rights in the world, facing multiple threats and violent attacks, an extensive investigation has found.
The research, published today by human rights organisation Front Line Defenders, found that their visibility as sex workers who are advocates for their communities’ rights makes them more vulnerable to the violations routinely suffered by sex workers. In addition, they face unique, targeted abuse for their human rights work.
Continue reading...With famous users leading a rebrand, pleasure accessories lose their stigma in a £90bn health and wellness boom
Lily Allen has one. Cara Delevingne has one. Dakota Johnson has developed her own range. Is the celebrity sex toy 2021’s answer to the celebrity perfume?
For some, getting busy has been the last thing on the menu during the pandemic. Study after study, from India to Italy, has revealed that lockdown libido loss is real and that stress has killed the buzz in the bedroom. Sexual wellness, on the other hand, has reached a dizzying peak. Not only has the conversation around sexual pleasure changed for generation Z, but the industry attached to it – from apps to toys, herbal supplements to specialist oils – is also booming.
Continue reading...In 30 years as an activist, he has fought to stop black gay men being forgotten, broken taboos about homosexuality and campaigned to make life-changing PrEP medication available on the NHS
Marc Thompson was 17 when he found out he had HIV. He had been out as gay for only a year when a friend suggested he get himself tested. “I thought: ‘Yeah, why not? I’m not going to be positive.’ You had to wait two weeks for the results back then – I’d actually arranged to have lunch with a friend on the day they were due, because it never occurred to me that I would be positive.”
Thompson says he will never forget how he felt that day – partly because he is still asked about it all the time. As one of the UK’s leading HIV, Aids and queer black men’s health campaigners, sharing his own experience comes with the job. “I felt complete and utter numbness,” he says. “All I could hear was white noise. I was walking around in a daze.”
Continue reading...As life expectancy stalls and infant mortality rises, abolishing Public Health England will only make things worse
In the midst of Covid-19 it is easy to forget that the country is facing not just one, but two, very badly managed public health emergencies. The substantial and largely avoidable death toll in the current epidemic is undoubtedly due to a series of ill-informed and inept decisions about how the country should respond to its greatest public health crisis in more than a century. But the virus’s task was undoubtedly made easier by a serious deterioration in the health of the population over the past decade.
Since the beginning of the 20th century life expectancy in England has improved consistently. Until the last decade that is. As a result of government policies over the last 10 years improvement in life expectancy has stalled, and for women in the most deprived areas it has actually fallen. The widening gap between life expectancy in the best-off and worst-off areas is now almost 10 years for men and seven and a half years in women. Similarly, the infant mortality rate for England and Wales reached its lowest point in 2014 and has been consistently higher ever since. Across a whole range of other public health indicators, such as drug-related deaths, sexually transmitted diseases and childhood immunisations, the position has been deteriorating.
Continue reading...The actor and comedian decided it was time to have the procedure after he and his wife had had four children. Here he writes candidly about the experience, and why it was the kindest cut
I got a vasectomy a few months ago. A vasectomy is when they cut and tie off the vas deferens, which are these little tubes in your ball sack (scrotum) so that there’s no sperm (sperm) in your jizz (semen) when you bust (ejaculate). I did this because my wife and I don’t want her to get pregnant again. It doesn’t mean we don’t want any more kids, it just means that if we did have any more, they’d have to be adopted or stolen or left to us because friends or family with young kids died in a plane crash or had their brain stems blown apart by less-lethal rounds fired at them at point-blank range while they were waiting in an 11-hour line attempting to vote in November.
I figured after all my wife, Leah, and her body had done for our family, the least I could do was let a doctor slice into my bag and sterilise me. Leah had taken birth control for decades, which is a giant pain in the ass and also decidedly sexist pharmacological slavery. IMAGINE a man having to remember to not only take a pill every day, but also having to deal with employer-provided private insurance prescription plans in the US which drop you or sell your plan to another company without telling you, among other crimes. And messing up once could land you with – for example – an ectopic pregnancy that isn’t diagnosed soon enough because you’re afraid to go to the doctor due to your high deductible, so you literally die and are dead, in a cemetery. I think I speak for my bros when I say: “No thanks!”
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