She was speaking at the launch of a sexual health promotion strategy for the province on Tuesday.

The Department of Health aims to cut newly acquired infections by a quarter over the next six years.

It also hopes to reduce births to teenage mothers by 40% by 2007.

Ms Smith said agencies needed to address “mental health treatment plan
ignorance” about sex and sexuality in society which was causing “confusion, unhappiness and the breakdown of relationships”.

STRATEGY’S AIMS Establish multi-agency sexual health promotion strategy implementation group Develop accessible sexual health public information campaign Set up sexual health forums to co-ordinate local initiatives including the HIV/AIDS prevention and other diseases Publish accessible local directories of sexual health resources Offer routine testing for HIV to all best diet health man odds pregnancy medicine clinics by September 2004 Provide specialised training for health and social care professionals for dealing with sexual health issues affecting lesbians, gay and bisexuals

The strategy says young people’s perceptions of sex were being distorted by a number of factors.

It highlighted prevailing religious and moral attitudes which discouraged talk about sexual issues, as well as explicit and misleading images in the media.

Sexual health services were not well publicised in Northern Ireland, according to the government consultation document.

Young people found it especially difficult to assess emergency health mag magazine man services, the report said.

During 2001/2, 3m was spent on 24,000 outpatient attendances.

Visits

During 2001, there were 19,765 fresh outpatient visits to man health abs diet
medicine clinics in the province, including 17 new cases of HIV.

There were also 148 new diagnoses of gonorrhoea, while 947 people were treated for chlamydia.

Men were mostly being affected by a continuing outbreak of infectious syphilis in Northern Ireland.

The department found homosexuality tended to be “more covert” in the province because of generally negative and discriminatory attitudes.

Of 21,962 live births to women in Northern Ireland in 2001, 1,524 were to teenagers aged 19 and under.

One hundred and seventy teenagers aged between 13 and 16 became mothers in 2001.

Deaths from sexual illnesses in Northern Ireland average three per year.

Interested parties have until 19 March to respond to the consultation.