Comportamiento sexual y enfermedades de transmisión sexual en adolescentes de secundaria básica de Ciudad de la Habana, 1995-1996

an upward trend in sexually-transmitted diseases (std) is observed worldwide, which results from sexual relations beginning at earlier ages. such situation moved us to carry out a descriptive crosswise study using an equiprobabilistic sample of 1 108 adolescents who studied in junior high schools in the city of havana, with the objective of knowing their sexual behaviours, criteria on persons affected with an std, histories of these diseases and opinions about the quality of information received on std. data were obtained from an interview which was structured and prepared for this and. it was found that average age of initiation of sex relations was 13,19 y for females and 12,08 years for males. half of the interviewed students considered that stds were characteristic of immoral people and criminal settings. the most referred diseases according to the percent of teenagers were pediculosis pubis and herpes genitalis in males, and monoliasis and trichomoniasis in females. rounghly 40 % of students stated that the quality of information on sexual matters was moderate or poor.