The Hospital, Monday 9pm, Channel 4

posted by Stewart Turner

The Hospital (c) Channel 4

Over a grimly familiar montage of short-skirted teenage girls staggering around vomit-splattered streets and being wheeled around the nation’s overworked A&E departments, one expert summed it all up in shocking terms: "This is the first generation that’re going to die younger than their parents."

And if the cerebrally challenged kids shown in last night's opening episode of The Hospital are typical, it’s not too hard to see why. Despite the last Government pumping millions into awareness campaigns, 25-year-old Michael reckons that chlamydia is “a rite of passage”, something to mark your transition from boy to man not unlike your first pint of beer in a pub. Michael “can’t remember” whether he’s had three or four partners in the last month. After his appearance last night, it’s unlikely he’ll be getting too many offers in August.

Then there was Stacey, a swaggering youth who demanded to see a female doctor because the male doc must think he's "Elton John or something”. “You’ve got no d***!” hooted the two chums he’d brought along for moral support. Equally misguided was Shannon, a 15-year-old who had a miscarriage a couple of months ago and keeps forgetting to take her pill. When she eventually turned up to have contraceptive implants fitted, she managed to turn simple 10-minute procedure into a 90-minute whinge-fest.

Appalling statistics were scattered liberally throughout the film: one in 10 young people are infected with chlamydia; one in three people who are HIV positive have no idea they’re infected; STIs account for £1bn of the annual NHS budget. And despite a few amusing diversions including catalogue model Tommy ("I'm quite active, that's just who I am, what can I say?") and the revelation that some visitors to the clinic don’t see having a cotton bud stuck down below as any reason not to ask their doctor (like Rachael Jones, above) out on a date, it was the shocking figures that made the biggest impression.

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