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Measure your penis and chat about mental health, young Swedes told

The Local Sweden
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Measure your penis and chat about mental health, young Swedes told
Not the measuring tape in question. Photo: Staffan Löwstedt/SvD/TT

A clinic in southern Sweden hopes that its new penis measuring tape will convince more young men to stop by for appointments.

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The tape, which measures diameter rather than length, is designed to help young men find the appropriate size of condom. It is part of a new project in collaboration with the Blekinge county council which aims to get more young men to visit youth clinics.

“When you get guys to visit you can move on to mental health, so we want to get them here one way or another,” Emelie Svensson, a district nurse at the clinic told radio station P4 Blekinge.

Since October the clinic has been visiting male-dominated upper secondary school courses to inform them about their work and sexual health, and will now also begin to visit homes for vulnerable young people.

The Blekinge clinic is not the first in Sweden to use this kind of scheme. This time last year a public clinic in Stockholm started handing out measuring tapes to young men in an effort to encourage them to practice safer sex.

Sexually transmitted diseases have been on the rise in Sweden in recent years. The number of new syphilis cases has more than tripled in some parts of the country over a five year period. Cases of gonorrhoea meanwhile more than doubled between 1995 and 2015, according to the Swedish Public Health Agency.

Despite that, the overall number of Swedes using condoms is in decline.

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