How many people were infected with syphilis in England and Wales last year? What is the average cost of a lifetime's course of HIV treatment? Do men or women make more use of sexual transmitted infection clinics? How often do HIV-positive gay men have sex with a new partner without using a condom? Our brief guide gives you the lowdown on sexual health.

· Cases of gonorrhoea in England and Wales are at their highest for a decade - new cases rose by 27% between 1999 and 2000. There were 64,000 new episodes of genital warts, and over 300 cases of syphilis (an increase of 55%), over the same period. Instances of genital chlamydia are also rising sharply - on average a case was diagnosed every 10 minutes in 2000.

· The number of visits to genito-urinary medicine departments in England have doubled over the last decade to around 1.1m a year in 1999.

· The numbers of women visiting sexual health clinics have overtaken men in the past decade. In 1960 men accounted for around 75% of all attendances; by 1992 the proportion was around 50-50, and by 1996 women represented more than half of all visits, a trend that is gradually increasing.
· The medical consequences of poor sexual health include: pelvic inflammatory disease, which can cause pregnancy problems and infertility; HIV; cervical cancer; liver cancer; hepatitis; chronic liver disease; and genital herpes.
· The number of HIV infections newly diagnosed in 2000 was the highest since reporting began in 1984. Then, diagnoses numbered around 1,200, rising to just under 3,000 in 1985, the previous highest annual count. In 2000, there were around 3,250 diagnoses.

· The average lifetime costs for an HIV positive person is calculated to be between £135,000 and £181,000, while the monetary value for preventing a single transmission of HIV is estimated to be between £500,000 and £1m.

· Prior to 1999, infections acquired through homosexual sex accounted for the majority of HIV infections; since then, the highest proportion of infections have been acquired through heterosexual sex, 75% of these picked up abroad.

· An estimated 30,000 people live with HIV in the UK, of whom roughly one third are undiagnosed. About 400 people a year die of HIV infections.

· The average age at which people start having sex is now 17; 40 years ago it was 21 for women and 20 for men. Between a third and a half of teenagers do not use contraception when they have intercourse for the first time, while a quarter of 15-year-olds think that the pill protects against infection.

· A study of gay men in 1999 showed that more than half of those under 20 did not use a condom, while a recent study showed that 44% of HIV positive men had had sex with a new partner in the past month, of whom 40% did not use a condom.

· Teenage birth rates in the UK are the highest in western Europe - treble those in France and six times those in the Netherlands.

· There were 174,000 abortions in England and Wales in 1999. Abortion rates are highest among women between the ages of 18 and 22.

· The availability of abortions funded by the NHS varies between 46% and 96% in different health authority areas. Waiting times for abortions can be as long as five weeks in some parts of the country.

Sources: Department of Health; Public Health Laboratory Service