Cape Town pupils who use tik are walking sexual-risk timebombs, raising concerns for the spread of HIV/Aids, says a shocking report from the SA Medical Research Council, newly published in the international scientific journal Drug and Alcohol Review. The research concerns youngsters who would now be in matric, but who were in Grade 9 when the 2005 study took place. According to the study, of those pupils who had used tik in the 30 days before the study, nearly 60 percent had already had vaginal sex, 43 percent had had oral sex and 41 percent anal sex. The average age of the pupils in the study was 15. Of the tik users, 18 percent had already been pregnant or made a girl pregnant and nearly one-third had had a sexually transmitted infection. Dr Andreas Pluddemann, senior scientist at the MRC's Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Unit and the study's lead researcher, warned that the link between tik use and HIV risk behaviours pointed to a real threat for spreading the epidemic.
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