[Ethics and efficacy in sexual health campaigns].

The effectiveness of the diverse campaigns of sexual education carried out in Spain in the last 15 years scarcely has been analyzed. These campaigns have been directed fundamentally to adolescent people and its declared purpose has consisted of promoting the called "safe sex" being based only in the information on methods of barrier. Trying to clarify the efficacy of these campaigns, in the present work the epidemiological data contributed by the Department of Health and the National Institute of the Spanish Youth have been retrospectively investigated. As far as it can be measured, the evolution of the consequences of the sexual practices of the adolescents (abortions and unintended pregnancies) in the sanitary environment were also analyzed. Likewise, the data of the National Registry of Epidemiological Surveillance on the evolution of sexually transmitted diseases are collected. The results obtained of this analysis show that in teenages between 15 and 19 years, a progressive increase in the percentage of abortions regarding the total number of pregnancies has grown from 20% in 1990 to 44% in 2000 arriving at 46.6% in 2003. These data correspond with an progressive increase also related to the total number of abortions in Spain, reaching 13.7% in 2005. Likewise, the consumption of the postcoital pills for adolescents is analyzed. It has passed from 160.000 prescriptions in 2001 to nearly half a million units in 2005. This means the demand of this resource in the last 5 years has multiplied by three without achieving a stabilization in the number of new abortions per year. The evolution of the declared sexually transmitted diseases shows an increase of 79% in the infections by syphilis and a 45.8% in uncomplicated gonorrhoea. As conclusions, since an ethical perspective and since the perspective of sanitary efficiency, it can be affirmed that the validity of the campaigns of "safe sex" remains in doubt after analyzing the available data. The refusal to include in these campaigns the promotion of the abstinence in the first years of the adolescence, and the the refusal to promote the fidelity limiting the number of sexual partners, only seems to be justified for not sanitary, ideological motives, implying this a clear damage to the population at risk, saying nothing about the data of inefficiency, already available, of the campaigns previously carried out.