February 13 marks World Condom Day—not as a moralizing reminder or a recycled slogan, but as an opportunity to talk about prevention again, with concrete data and a contemporary perspective.
Because even though we now have more information, more contraceptive methods, and greater access to sexual health services, condom use is not increasing at the same pace. In some groups, it’s actually declining.
Recent statistics from public health organizations show a clear global trend: as condom use decreases, sexually transmitted infections (STIs) increase. Each year, an estimated more than 374 million new cases of curable STIs—such as chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, and trichomoniasis—are reported, with sustained rises across different regions of the world. In several developed countries, fewer than half of young people say they use condoms regularly, and studies indicate that around 30% of adolescents do not use condoms during sexual intercourse.
Among older adults, the situation is not very different. After age 30, condom use often declines due to a perceived lower risk, and among people over 50 it is frequently abandoned altogether once the fear of pregnancy disappears. This is compounded by the increase in vasectomies as a permanent contraceptive method—a valid decision in family planning, but one that often leads to abandoning protection against sexually transmitted infections.
Part of this shift has to do with how risk is perceived today. HIV, which shaped an entire generation for decades, now has effective treatments that allow people to live long, well-managed lives. Added to this is the availability of options like emergency contraception, which reduced the immediate fear of pregnancy. These advances are essential from a public health perspective, but they have also contributed to a greater sense of security that, in many cases, has displaced condom use. Yet the data is clear: condom use has prevented more than 117 million new HIV infections since 1990, proving that it remains a key prevention tool.
The problem is that STIs do not distinguish by age, marital status, or type of relationship—and many do not present visible symptoms. Infections such as gonorrhea, chlamydia, or syphilis can go unnoticed for long periods and, in some cases, are becoming harder to treat due to growing antibiotic resistance. For this reason, specialists recommend that all sexually active people undergo testing at least once a year for infections such as HIV, hepatitis, syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia—even when “everything seems fine.”
In this context, the condom—both the external and the internal version, also known as the female condom—remains the only tool that protects against sexually transmitted infections. Although less widely used, the female condom offers the same preventive effectiveness and expands options for protection, especially in situations where negotiating the use of an external condom is difficult.
The expansion of effective contraceptive methods to prevent pregnancy was an undeniable advance. Still, along the way, a fundamental distinction was often overlooked: no other method, except condoms, reduces the risk of STI transmission. It’s not about choosing one or the other, but about combining them in an informed way.
For years, the condom was synonymous with care and prevention. Today, for many people, it seems like something from the past—not because it stopped working, but because the way we perceive risk has changed. However, the data is unequivocal: sexually transmitted infections continue to rise, affecting all ages, genders, and social contexts.
World Condom Day doesn’t exist to repeat the obvious or to lecture. It exists to remind us of something essential: prevention never went out of style. What did age is the idea that protecting yourself is no longer necessary.
