Healthcare Seeking and Sexual Behaviour of Clients Attending the Suntreso STI Clinic

Abstract

Every year 340 million people are infected by four most important sexually transmitted infections excluding HIV namely syphilis, gonorrhoea, trichomoniasis and chlamydia. Sixty-nine million of these infections occur in sub- Saharan Africa. What people do when they have a symptom or a suspicion of STIs has major implications for transmissions and consequently for disease control. This study examined the reasons for patterns of health seeking and related sexual behaviours of patients who presented at the STI clinic in Suntreso, Kumasi. This was a cross sectional descriptive study. A study of clients with Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI) attending an STI clinic in Kumasi, Ghana found that of 185 patients, Sixty four percent (n=119) of them delayed for more than 4 weeks before seeking treatment at the clinic and another 61% (n=114) had sought treatment elsewhere and Eighty percent (n= 148) of the patients had sex whiles symptomatic.

Keywords: Disease, infected, health seeking.