They are the third most commonly used form of contraception in the UK, behind The Pill and the hormonal implant, official data shows.
But condoms are used by a very small proportion of Brits overall, a new poll reveals.
According to a global survey of more than 29,000 people in 36 countries, only 15 per cent of Brits said they’d bought condoms in the last year.
This is compared to nations with the highest condom purchases like the UAE, where 63 per cent of respondents said they’d bought the contraception recently.
Residents of Vietnam are also cautious; nearly half of participants who live there use them.
A global survey of condom use found that those living in The Netherlands and Japan were the least likely to buy contraception.
But the UK is far from the most condom-averse, the survey, conducted by Durex, found.
At the bottom of the list were Japan and the Netherlands, where just 12 per cent of survey respondents said they’d stocked up on condoms in the past 12 months.
Lovers in the USA ranked roughly the same as the UK, with just 16 per cent buying condoms.
Condoms are the most effective method of preventing sexually transmitted infections like chlamydia, gonorrhea and herpes, proving successful in 95 per cent of cases.
However, studies show that when condoms are used incorrectly, effectiveness drops to roughly 79 per cent.
The Durex poll found that the most common reasons for not using a condom include perceived lack of sensation — cited by 16 per cent of respondents — lack of spontaneity (14 per cent) and the thought of them being a mood killer (13 per cent).
Studies investigating the incidence of STIs around the globe appear to echo some of this data.
Only 15 per cent of the UK population say they buy condoms, according to a study of nearly 30,000
According to a 2022 international report published in the journal Frontiers in Medicine, the region with the highest prevelance of STIs since 1990 is East Asia — including Japan, where just 12 per cent of people buy condoms.
Belgium was said to be the nation with the lowest STI prevelance, according to the global study.
What’s more, according to data from the European Centre For Disease Prevention and Control, the Netherlands has the fifth highest number of annual reported cases of chlamydia of all European nations — roughly 24,000.
France, where just 16 per cent of people reguarly buy condoms, ranked 7th, with 14,199 chlamydia cases reported in 2022.
In comparison, Cyprus, Greece and Croatia reported 10, 59 and 100 cases respectively.
Some 402,000 sexually transmitted infections were diagnosed in the UK last year, the most common being chlamydia (49 per cent), and gonorrhoea (21 per cent).
Around 14 per cent of STIs spotted in Brits were genital herpes or genital warts.
Overall, new diagnoses of STIs have declined in the UK, but
The past decade has seen a decrease in the number of new diagnoses of many STIs, but gonorrhoea and syphilis have increased.
The number of gonorrhoea diagnoses in 2023 was the highest since records began in 1918, while the number of syphilis diagnoses was the highest reported since 1948.
Experts are also concerned that gonorrhoea has developed resistance to certain antibiotics, limiting the treatment options available.
