Most of the sexually transmitted diseases (STD) can be treated with antibiotics provided they were caused by bacteria. Some might need a little bit special attention but nonetheless, the only barrier between getting a diagnosis and getting a treatment is the fact that people with STD are presumed to be sexually promiscuous (stigma). I mean, sometimes, you are not the one with the problem but due to some incident (having sexual intercourse with an infected partner), you were implicated by it; that's quite unfortunate. Think about how much we can do if sexually transmitted diseases were diagnosed early, spreading of diseases can be prevented that's for sure.
In the United States of America (USA), STD has been one of the groups of illnesses which have caught the attention of the media due to the fact that they were rising year by year. The highest number recorded by the Centres for Disease Control can be traced back to 2016 whereby the number of cases who have been diagnosed with STD was approximately 2 million cases. It can be from different or the same individual but the point is there must be something wrong in the system which would allow them to rise to the highest since the government decided to keep track the number of people being infected with STD in 1941.
I think all of you know that STDs are not self-limiting. Most of the time, they will need special care, special kind of medication and special kind of attention to ensure the disease will not spread to the other healthy people. Sexual education is important in highlighting the benefit of using condoms and other measures to protect ourselves from being infected thus it will be irresponsible for an individual who knows they were infected yet refuse to use a condom or consider abstinence for a while to ensure the infection does not spread.
In the 1400s, when we realised there are some bugs which are capable of causing signs and symptoms that can be fatal, various countermeasures were introduced. Of course, it is not easy to manage things which we consider as novel and in the 1800s, we started to record the number of admission in the hospital related to people who were infected by certain diseases. Syphilis was one of the oldest STD ever diagnosed and once, they were thought to only affect the people from the upper classes. Unfortunately, microbial agents were not biased. They infected all people the same so back then every single disease related to sexual intercourse was termed as venereal diseases.
Once we thought that only people who were extremely infectious need to be isolated from the community as we can simply become infected just by sitting close to them but people with STD were once isolated to prevent them from having sexual intercourse while they were in the treatment (in which they were considered highly infectious). It's undeniable that with an effective health screening program, STD rate can be reduced but the question is how many people would attend the screening program that would allow them to be diagnosed and treated?
Stigma has always been an unseen barrier towards achieving a better state of general health among people in a community especially if those diseases were considered strictly taboo. Chlamydia, syphilis, HIV, gonorrhoea, you named it, who would be comfortable sitting beside an individual if we knew they have one of the stated diseases. We knew that we can't get infected that way but still we felt insecure and uncomfortable with that particular social situation.
Flesh-Eating STD
There are some bacteria in the environment that are so pervasive and detrimental as the disease process caused by them made it looks like we are getting eaten by an unseen entity typically known as the flesh-eating microbial agents. Among all of the sexually transmitted diseases, donovanosis can be considered as one of the flesh-eating diseases that made your genital looks like they were being bitten by bullet ants. Of course, the presentation can be quite similar to syphilis which started out as a painless ulcer but with time, the condition can be much worse and you can expect the small-sized ulcer to grow and form a reddish sac which looks fragile and easily bleed even with the slightest touch.
Having sexual intercourse with someone that we didn't know can cost you a lot, I mean, people don't wear any tag which stated the total number of people they have done it with or either they have been diagnosed with STD before. Even if you were so desperate to have sex by subscribing to the service provided by the sex worker, the most responsible thing you can do for the both of you is to wear protection. Like any other STD, donovanosis can be caused by having unprotected sexual intercourse with an infected partner or in some rare cases, through oral sex.
If you used to see the picture of someone's genital riddled with the cancerous lesion, then you can imagine how yours would look like if you were in the last stage of that particular infection; it is almost similar according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Genital scarring can make it looks weird and if you were diagnosed and treated early with the FDA-approved antibiotics, you can certainly avoid that kind of complications. You can't imagine the irreversible damage imposed by donovanosis as it literally eats up your genital tissue making it looks distorted.
The culprit is known as klebsiella granulomatis and it can be found mostly in the tropical and subtropical regions making it quite common to be contracted among people living in some parts of America, Oceania and South Africa. Seriously, guys, it is not only specific to this flesh-eating infection but all kind of STD. If you were someone who keeps on changing sexual partner or used to have sex without wearing any protection, get tested early so that any problem arises can be addressed as soon as it can be detected. Even people with HIV can have a normal lifespan if detected and treated early.
References: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]
All images were taken from Pixabay
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