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Section 6: STIs

Contents:

• Similarities
• Differences

In one respect this brief discussion of STIs raises many issues that are also raised in the HIV/AIDS pages of this web site. The simiarities between STIs and HIV/AIDS are:

• The epidemiological dimensions of the infections are seen to be primarily behavioural for both HIV/AIDS and STIs;
• Those most affected by both HIV/AIDS and STIs are young adults who are sexually active;
• Methods of control for both STIs and HIV/AIDS mainly involve targeting prevention through behaviour change;
• The early stages of being infected for both HIV/AIDS and STIs can be asymptomatic: i.e. you may not know that you are affected for some time after initial infection;
• STIs and HIV/AIDS both tend to be discussed in shameful and rather embarrassing terms, with much denial by those affected and by their friends and family, even if they know of someone being affected.

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Image showing a public health poster on syphillis from the late 1940s.

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However, there are important features of STIs that differentiate them more broadly from HIV/AIDS:

• STIs, unlike HIV/AIDS, can be cured;
• Drugs for control of the infections, unlike anti-retrovirals for lowering the impacts of HIV, are relatively cheap and easily available even in poor countries ;
• STIs, unlike HIV/AIDS, seldom cause death ;
• STIs, unlike HIV/AIDS, refer to a group of infections rather than a single process of collapse of the immune system;
• STIs, unlike HIV/AIDS which was first scientifically identified in 1981, are long-standing, much identified and discussed in history.

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