By Nasriya Naffin, TON Sri Lanka

After the country's intermediate regime Central Bank printed money to start the worst currency crisis in its history, health officials reported that Sri Lanka is now seeing an increase in the detection of sexually transmitted diseases as inexperienced sex workers enter the industry.

Health officials claim that the traditional high-risk groups, such as drug users and homosexuals who have multiple partners, are still contributing to the rise of STDs.

The number of HIV patients reported in the first quarter of 2022 was 4,556, an increase of 11.8% from the first quarter of 2021, according to the National STD/AIDS Control Programme. 4,686 HIV patients have been identified as of the second quarter of 2022, up 13.2% from 4,142 in 2021. 2,221 patients with additional sexually transmitted diseases, down from 2,676 patients the previous year, were found in the first three months of 2022. 2,576 patients with additional STDs were discovered in the second quarter, up from 1,753 in 2021.

The public suffers in all nations when currencies crash, after central banks print money to lower interest rates. Similar situations have happened in Latin America too.

Macro-economists in Sri Lanka have strong support for soft-pegging, which allows for flexible exchange rates and covers up interest rate targeting errors by depreciating the currency. In 2022, Sri Lanka's rupee dropped from 200 to 360 to the US dollar after the government's main bank printed money for two years to keep interest rates low in an effort to spur economic growth.

A previous currency crisis brought on by the central bank of the intermediate regime devalued the rupee from 4.76 to 200 during the process of printing money to suppress interest rates. With a reserve collecting peg known as a dual anchor regime. There have been calls to change the central bank law to forbid economists from using flexible or discretionary policy.

However, detractors claim there is no chance for monetary stability with flexible inflation targeting, the most recent dual anchor monetary regime that Western mercantilists are set to legalize and sell to the third world.

A sizable portion of the patients being discovered are under the age of 30, indicating that the country's younger generation are victims. 1688 male patients with STDs between the ages of 15 and 49 and 2610 female patients in the same age range were found during the first half of 2022.

Health officials speculate that the increase may also be due to other factors.Other factors might be in play in addition to the increase in new commercial sex workers. Not just sex workers experienced an increase. Curfews for the coronavirus may also cause some people to become more stressed, which may lead them to seek out commercial sex workers.

Additionally, at high risk for STDs are members of the homosexual and transgender communities who have multiple partners. Their numbers increased as well. It might be as a result of people's increased willingness to undergo testing today.

According to Geethani Samaraweera (Consultant Venereologist) “It can be because now these communities are being more accepted in the society and the new methods we are using in order to reach out to these communities to come and do tests, because it is better to treat that than letting it spread,”

“When we go back around 10 years, of the total patients around 30-35 percent were homosexuals”.

“But year by year it has increased and now of the total amount higher percentage belongs to that category, especially homosexual and transgender.”

“Of the total number of patients, now it has gotten close to 60 percent. It can be either more people are coming to test themselves or the approaches we have taken in order for these communities to come forward and test themselves can be the reasons for that.”

There may be an increase in drug usage which has increased among females as well and mainly abuse of Crystal methamphetamine (ICE) is observed.

“This has become more popular with young people making them more desirable for unprotected sexual activities,” “Even the people who usually use protection will tend not to use it after being infused with this drug.” Samaraweera said.

Increased identification and testing stop the spread of diseases. In order to combat HIV and STDs in general, better sexual education is also required. Online sexual content is being exposed to younger people more frequently, after the education system switched to the online mode when the pandemic began. Because of the lack of proper guidance and education children are more vulnerable.

Some observers also claim that some of the online content is useful for the children too. A disagreement also resulted from an effort to formally educate school children using a companion book called the ‘Hathe Athe Potha’. Divine religions forbid illicit sexual relations and homosexuals as well as drugs. If the people of Sri Lanka follow the Divine religious codes they can easily get rid of HIV and usage of drugs.