If yesterday’s icky statistics are anything to go by, the condom is in dire need of a rebrand. According to the UK Health Security Agency, we’re in the grips of a major STI surge: cases of gonorrhoea have gone up by 50 per cent in a year and the number of people with syphilis is the highest since 1948.
The advice from Agency experts — who were at pains to point out that condoms were the only way to guard against most of these diseases — basically amounted to “grab your rubbers, singletons, it’s getting itchy out there.” And given that successive public health surveys have shown that condom use has been steadily falling — particularly among young people — conditions may not improve for some time.
