Sexual Transmitted Infection Prevention in Adolescents - Essay Example

These could include family planning clinics, sex workers and gynecologists. STIs are very commonly found amongst most women suffering from sexual assault. Little data on men has been found. STIs put men and women especially to considerable risk. There is a huge lack of awareness and dearth of information available to these people at large. Most young women are most concerned about pregnancy prevention than STI transmission. There is a lack of concern and negligicence towards the seriousness of this matter that makes it an all the more important issue to address.

STIs can lead to cancer, organ damage, pregnancy issues and even death. Thus it is important for health agencies to look into it. The definition of adolescence has been subjected to intense debate and argument over the course of last couple of years. In the 1950s it was thought that adolescent should be best considered to be the period of transitioning other literature defines it in terms of the words “young” and “youth”. However, the term young adult was also introduced recently. The treatment of adolescence has varied in different parts of the world.

It is different in the west and different in the east. For instance in India, many girls have pre-arranged marriages before they hit their first menstruation. As soon as they hit get their first periods, they are married off at ages as young as 16 years. This increases the probability of STI transmission in them. On the contrary, in the west, marriage does not materialize till really long. Girls there are subjected to consummation with different people at different phases of their life. There are no ethical obligations to restricting sex to one partner.

Hence, all this makes it very difficult to come up with a universal STI prevention transmission program for health agencies. There are various barriers to prevention and treatment of STIs amongst adolescents. The biggest problem associated with STI control is considered to be the asymptomatic nature of the infections caused by STI. The infections remain invisible in many young girls in particular till some severe sequels. In some settings the proportion of infections that are rated as asymptotic may even be even higher because many women would consider them to be “normal”.

The only viable way of detecting asymptomatic infections is via the use of laboratory test. In some resource poor settings, this is impeded by the fact that the tests are not just difficult to perform they are even expensive. Even more difficult is obtaining tissue samples for these tests as they are less likely to be accepted without them. The adoption of these tests is perpetually impossible in most developing countries like India. This is because they are very expensive to conduct and obtain there.

More than half the population, lives below the poverty belt which makes it impossible for them to afford such tests. Another important reason behind the failure of STI transmission prevention is the fact that most adolescents don’t consider it to be an issue important enough. It is only HIV which is considered to be important by these young adult and hence, this topic is at an all time low priority for them. Adolescent girls tend to be more cautious about preventing pregnancy and their menstrual problems then about their STI problems.

For the boys on the other hand, sexual health concern outride reproductive health ones. A study was recently conducted in Zimbabwe. The study unveiled