About This Course

More than 1 million sexual transmitted infections (STIs) are acquired every day worldwide. Vertical transmissions of STIs can result in stillbirth, neonatal death, prematurity and congenital deformities in newborns. Untreated STIs in women can cause pelvic inflammatory disease and infertility in women. An estimated 500 million people are estimated living with genital herpes and about 300 million women have human papilloma virus (HPV) infection, the primary cause of cervical cancer and anal cancer of men who have sex with men.

Major challenges for a correct diagnosis are the facts that STIs are often asymptomatic, symptoms may be non-specific, and limited capacity for laboratory testing in many low-resource settings. Therefore healthcare workers are unable to establish a highly needed etiological diagnosis that allows targeted treatment and still have to rely on the less accurate WHO recommended syndromic approach. Since this STI course is very intensive, we divided the course in part 1 and part 2. In order to get invited to part 2, you must have successfully followed part 1.

In this 2 weeks course part 1 we discuss history taking, physical examination, the WHO guiding of the syndromic approach to STIs and in more detail several STIs including primary and secondary syphilis. All remaining STIs such as gonorrhea, chlamydial infections and HPV will be discussed in part 2. Moreover we will also launch a separate syphilis course which also includes tertiary syphilis and congenital syphilis.

The STI course is highly recommended to be followed by all AHF healthcare workers involved in HIV care, this part 1 is awarded with 3.5 CME credit hours. It was prepared by Dr. Clemens Richter, CME consultant AHF in cooperation with and reviewed by Dr. Adele Schwartz Benzaken, Senior Global Medical Director and Dr. Fernanda Fonseca, Associate Global Medical Director.