Ways to maximize reproductive health resources include combining family planning services with appropriate STD/HIV prevention activities. Articles discuss STD risk assessments, the use of emergency contraception as a backup to condom use, and efforts to develop HIV drugs, vaccines and microbicides. Factors influencing service to different client groups, including women, HIV-infected mothers, and youth are examined.
In this issue
Chart: Common Reproductive Tract Infections
- A concise description of 11 common reproductive tract infections, including bacterial and viral sexually transmitted diseases, is given. Contraceptive considerations are summarized. The infections are AIDS(HIV), bacterial vaginosis, candidiasis, chancroid, chlamydia, gonorrhea, herpes, human papilloma, hepatitis B, syphilis and trichomoniasis.
Opinion: Ounce of Prevention Worth a Million Lives
- Recent advances in HIV treatment, including the use of new protease inhibitors, are encouraging signs. Effective HIV prevention efforts, however, will continue to be needed for many years to come.
Risk Assessments Seek To Improve Screening
- Syndromic management seeks to identify whether someone has a sexually transmitted disease based only on a person's clinical signs and symptoms. A tool called "risk assessment" seeks to improve the accuracy of syndromic screening by including an evaluation of the person's behavior and other social circumstances.
Emergency Contraception As a Back-up Method
- To help condom users prevent an unplanned pregnancy, some health officials recommend emergency contraception as a backup method of family planning. Oral contraceptives can be given to women in advance as an emergency contraceptive option, if ever needed.
Experimental HIV Drugs May Improve Prevention
- As the AIDS epidemic nears the end of its second decade, promising technologies are under development to prevent infection, including vaccines, drugs and microbicides. Public health experts emphasize, however, that proven prevention efforts, including an emphasis on condom use, must continue to be part of the overall strategy to curtail infections.
Serving Young Adults Requires Creativity
- Sexually active young adults are seldom well-informed about their contraceptive choices or the risks they face in acquiring a sexually transmitted disease (STD). They are often reluctant to go to clinics for services and may even be refused services or treated rudely if they do. Inconvenient hours or location and unaffordable costs may also discourage them from seeking help.
STDs, Pregnancies Affect Women's Health
- For women, sexual intercourse can lead to two major health consequences: pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. Many experts view family planning and STD services as two essential components of reproductive health programs, not as separate services with different goals.
Factors Influence Services
- Integrating family planning with services to prevent or treat sexually transmitted diseases should be shaped by factors that influence women's access to services. These factors are biological, economic, cultural and perceptual.
Reducing the HIV Risk From Mother to Infant
- Worldwide, between one-fourth and one-third of infants born to women infected with HIV become infected themselves. Promoting HIV prevention among women is the primary means of preventing HIV infections among infants. For those women who do become infected, preventing pregnancy is a secondary way of reducing the spread of HIV to infants. For HIV-infected women who become pregnant, transmission to infants can occur in utero, during birth or through breastfeeding.
-
Click to select preferred language, if other than English:
French | Spanish.
