England tops STI league desk as instances of ‘the clap’ soar to report highs
New data suggests we Brits may finally be the best at something… coming first in the category of recording the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases in Europe
Brits are riddled (stock)(Image: Getty Images)
The UK has topped the charts. For (drumroll)… sexually transmitted diseases across Europe. Erm, right. Well done… give yourself a nice clap on the back, I suppose.
Figures published yesterday by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) also showed the number of STIs across Europe reached record highs in the last ten years.
The data looked at the number of STIs across all 27 EU members states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. And while England was not included in the new analysis, comparisons with official data from the same time period indicate it would rank, by some distance, as Europe’s worst-hit nation for sheer volume of suggest of gonorrhoea, chlamydia and syphilis cases.
And a look slightly further back to 2024, while Spain recorded 41,798 chlamydia cases – England logged a whopping 168,889 diagnoses.
Despite England’s population being around 10 million larger than Spain, per-capita calculations from 2024 show England would still have recorded a far higher amount – around 288 cases per 100,000 people compared to just 86 out of the same amount in Spain.
England’s chlamydia diagnoses also surpassed other UK nations, with Scotland recording 11,725 diagnoses in 2024.
Maybe that’s why we weren’t involved in the recent survey – the analysts simply took it for granted we’d be the most-riddled nation by a country mile.
Figures suggest we were also ahead of Spain in terms of gonorrhoea rates. It almost, almost makes up for losing the Men’s Euros to them, doesn’t it.
Elsewhere, the figures spelt troubling times for the Irish, who had the highest per-capita rate of gonorrhoea, with 109 cases found for every 100,000 people.
Bruno Ciancio, Head of Department at the ECDC, said: “Sexually transmitted infections have been on the rise for 10 years and reached record high levels in 2024.
“Untreated, these infections can cause severe complications, such as chronic pain and infertility and, in the case of syphilis, problems with the heart or nervous system.”
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