Health Education Needed to Improve Public STD Awareness in Somalia. (Reannouncement with New Availability Information).

摘要

To study public STD awareness among sexually active individuals in Mogadishu, we interviewed 183 patients presenting at an STD clinic and 29 controls. Only 2 out of 3 patients with proven STD knew that diseases can be transmitted through sexual intercourse, and only 1 out of 3 non-STD controls had this knowledge. Schools were listed as the source of their STD information by only 15%, and health providers by only 5% of the STD aware persons. Moreover, STD awareness did not seem to impact on people's life-style, since more STD aware persons were sexually promiscuous than their ignorant counterparts. We conclude that the STD awareness is very low in the general public in Somalia. Urgent health education campaigns are needed for slowing down the spread of STD. The epidemic of HIV, the latest addendum to the list of modern STD, could then perhaps be stopped, since educating the public on how to avoid getting exposed to the AIDS virus presently remains the only successful strategy in face of this new killer disease.