The website called www.vrijlekker.nl (have nice sex) went online on Wednesday and just hours after opening already had nearly half a million hits.

Although the Amsterdam health authorities, that set up the website to combat the rise in sexually transmitted diseases in young people aged 16 to 24, had expected the site would be popular “this beats our wildest expectations”, Udi Davidovich of the GGD health services told ANP.

So far the site has had nearly 960,000 hits generated by around 60,000 people. The GGD has increased the site’s capacity so that more curious youths can get safer sex training.

“Some years ago I met an individual who had intercourse with someone they met online, who didn’t disclose that they had an STD” or sexually transmitted disease, Gonzalo Paternoster of Florida-based SSP BioAnalytics said ahead of the launch of the Safe Sex Passport on December 1, World AIDS Day.

“The idea popped into my head that people know but don’t tell the truth, and we needed an independent way to verify someone’s health status,” he told AFP.

The Safe Sex Passport will be available — at a cost — to anyone over the age of 18 who goes online and orders the credit-card-size article.

“As soon as you order your card, you are referred to an affiliated laboratory where you can get tested for five major STDs,” Paternoster said.

Card holders are tested for HIV, genital herpes, chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis

“When you go to the test facility, you will have to show your official ID to make sure you are the person who owns the safe sex passport.

“The test results are tied to the card. So let’s say now you meet someone: they can call a phone number and get the test results and test date for you, plus identification information so that they know for sure that you are really the person who was tested,” he said.

“In the old days, you had to take someone’s word for it when they said they had been tested and were in the clear. Now you can ask for proof.”

Subscribers will also be provided with virtual health certificates, which can be posted on their online dating or MySpace profile page.

Nearly 15,000 people and several dating websites have already expressed an interest in the safe sex passports and online health certificates, Paternoster said.

The biggest age group showing an interest in acquiring the card are aged between 27 and 47, he said.

“A lot of them are divorced or have broken up after a long-term relationship, and now they’re back in the dating world and they’re terrified.”

The army of young people would be part of India’s frontline as it tries to slow the spread of the deadly virus, which already infects an estimated 5.7 million Indians, the world’s largest caseload, according to the United Nations.

“They could be weavers, or agricultural laborers or just be hanging around the village market place,” said Sujatha Rao, director general of India’s National Aids Control Organization.

“But the point is the distribution of condoms, and messages on radio and TV only go so far. We need to sit down with young people and make them talk,” she told a conference on sexual equality.

Those taking part in the scheme, who will be in their early 20s, will be asked to help dispel macho notions that men should try and have unprotected sex with as many women as they can, notions that health workers say are common.

Rao hopes to bring 20,000 out of India’s 640,000 villages, those with more than 5,000 inhabitants, into the scheme.