Clark County Health Department's "Get Yourself Tested" Campaign, Part 3
Wednesday, July 27th, 2016 -- 9:33 AM
-The Clark County Health Department is encouraging county residents to get tested for STI’s.I spoke with Kelsey Lynn, a nurse at Clark County’s Reproductive Health Clinic, and Melissa Kono, the county’s CNRED agent, about an initiative they’re running known as they “Get Yourself Tested” Initiative. Kelsey explained the barriers people face when it comes to getting tested.
"Number one, kinda going back to the no symptoms. So, we kinda have this mindset of no symptoms, no problem. Also, a big one would be the stigma or embarrassment attached to going to a clinic to have STI testing as well as the misconception about the method of specimen collection. For men, we can collect a specimen via a urine sample. So, you just have to pee into a cup. It's pretty simple, non-evasive. We can do that same specimen collection for females as well, but we also recommend a self collected vaginal swab. And then we can send these specimens off to the Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene for testing and these results are completely confidential if they're done, especially through my clinic, because I would receive those results from the Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene."
"There's also a misconception in regards to the treatment. Overall, just that fear of having a diagnosis. And yes, there are infections or STIs out there that cannot be cured and you'll have it lifelong, but for Chlamydia specifically, it's very curable. What we'd do is we would prescribe a one time dose of an antibiotic that they would take by mouth. And once they take that, we would recommend them to abstain from sexual intercourse for 7-14 days. And then also we'd want them to come back and re-test 3 months post treatment up to a year just to ensure that that infection did clear the body."
Coming up on Thursday, Kelsey will explain more barriers and extended clinic hours to provide testing for STIs.
In Case You Missed It:
Part 1: http://cwbradio.com/news/?fn_mode=fullnews&fn_id=17122
Part 2: http://cwbradio.com/news/?fn_mode=fullnews&fn_id=17125
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