A bizarre video featuring animated genitals has been adopted by health officials in Sweden to spread awareness of chlamydia.
The Hollywood-esque trailer, which has a voice-over, tells viewers to ‘rubber up and enjoy the ride’ – in reference to using a condom during sex.
A female voice can be heard in the background of the clip saying ‘faster, faster’, a phrase widely associated with a passionate night beneath the sheets.
Aimed to promote self-testing for the often symptomless STI, ‘The Test – Only You Can Do It’ is based on a ‘perfect love story’ of lust and trust.
The Hollywood-esque trailer, which has a voice-over, tells viewers to ‘rubber up and enjoy the ride’ – in reference to using a condom during sex
The voice-over, which paints chlamydia as a James Bond villain, said: ‘It all started as the perfect love story, a time of lust and trust, where each night is an adventure.
‘But danger lurks between the sheets, an evil mastermind.
‘You can’t see it, you can’t hear it, it doesn’t care who you are or where you’re from. There’s only one way to stop it. The condom.’
Towards the end of the video, a wizard in penis form emerges. It is believed to be a reference to Dumbledore from the Harry Potter series.
Why is it being used?
The strange video was adopted by public health officials in Kronoberg County, in the south of the Scandinavian country to encourage more people to order free STI tests that they can undertake in the comfort of their own home and then post to a testing centre.
Annika Magnerot, the county’s head of public health, told reporters that her and her team were thrilled when they were shown the footage for the first time.
She told The Local: ‘We all thought it was really great and fun, but also informative and different. It’s exciting, we really liked it.
‘The purpose of the film is to promote self-testing for chlamydia, and it’s so young people in the target age group between 15 and 24 know they can do this test for it.’
Ms Magnerot added: ‘Other public information films are perhaps around 15 minutes long, and you can’t hold a young person’s interest with a film that long.
‘The idea with this one is that it should be easy to spread on social media among the target group. So we hope it’ll do that and have a feeling it will.’
Chlamydia: The facts
Chlamydia is the most common STI in the UK, with more than 200,000 cases each year in England alone. Nearly 1.6 million were recorded in the US in 2015.
Often called the ‘silent disease’, as it rarely produces symptoms early on, chlamydia can lead to infertility if left untreated.
The bacterial infection is particularly common in sexually active teenagers and is passed through unprotected sex.