20pc Of Zimbabwean Youth Have STIs: Study

Epidemiologist and Sexual Reproductive Health Expert, Dr Chido Dziva Chikwari has warned of a high prevalence of three Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, and Trichomonas amongst Zimbabwe’s young and youthful population.

The data was revealed during a door-to-door Population Based Prevalence Survey that was conducted between 2020 and 22 in 16 communities around Zimbabwe where young people were tested for STIs.

Speaking in an interview recently, Dr Chikwari said it can’t be business as usual and there is need to adopt new methods of screening for STIs in communities.

“We tested for the three STIs Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, and Trichomonas and one of the headline findings was that 20 percent of young people tested positive for at least one of these three curable STIs.

We identified a high prevalence of STIs in community based settings amongst young people in Zimbabwe,” said Dr Chikwari.

The study was conducted by researchers at the Health Research Unit Zimbabwe which is part of the biomedical research and training institute in partnership with researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicines. The areas that were included in the research were Harare province, Bulawayo and Mashonaland East.

Specific communities or 24 clusters were selected from these provinces She further cautioned that majority of the STIs were asymptomatic and a person with these STIs would not know as there won’t be any physical representation in the form of discharge, foul smell or any signs linked to an STI.

“It’s not like young people are shunning health centres but just that a lot of young people do not know that they have an STI and from clinical history, we know that most of the STIs are not symptomatic that is why we are recommending a move towards diagnostic testing and at the moment in Zimbabwe there isn’t availability of diagnostic testing for most STIs.

“We test for HIV and there is point of care testing for Syphilis. For most of the STIs, if you would like a test, you go to the laboratory and this is assorted with a lot of costs and so it is quite expense and not attained for most people. We are recommending a move away from a syndromic approach for STIs to diagnostic testing.”

Meanwhile, recent data also shows that Neisseria gonorrhoeae, also known as gonococcus, the bacteria that causes Gonorrhea, a Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI), has since developed resistance to available treatment options in Zimbabwe, raising fears of long term health complications in both men and women such as infertility and still births. Leading Virologits, Dr Francis Ndowa said should the drug resistance situation go unchecked, it could lead to permanent chronic infections and long term complications.

“We are now on the last class of Antibiotics called Cephalosporins and of the Cephalosporins, the real effective one is the one called Ceftriaxone which is an injectable. For anyone who comes now with the Gonorrhea STI to be effectively treated, they need an injection of Ceftriaxone, there is no longer oral antibiotics, the gonococcus has become resistant to these Cephalosporins.

“The other classes of antibiotics over the years have become useless so we are looking at a group of Cephalosporins that are still effective in treating Gonorrhea. We have had a super bug from Asia, Japan that reached the United Kingdom (UK) overnight because of travel that was even resistant to this injectable antibiotic and they had to get a special antibiotic of which if it were to happen in Zimbabwe today, we would have to have a special import license to get that antibiotic to treat somebody similarly,” said Dr Ndowa.

The increase in Drug Resistant Gonorrhea is also feared to trigger catastrophic costs as patients will be forced to buy expensive antimicrobials to treat the STI which could become a burden for low and medium income countries such as Zimbabwe. HealthTimes