Issue: South-East Asia is lacking in adequacy and standardization of STI case reporting.
Project: STI services are mostly project based, dependent on funding from different donors with variable donor specific reporting requirements, available in multi-centric facilities like govt. hospitals, NGO run health clinics meant specially for high risk groups, private doctors, unqualified practitioners & pharmacists, so collecting regular uniform case reporting from those facilities and their centralized compilation to produce standardized and comprehensive country report is extremely challenging. Initiative from national programs to engage private providers in STI management and reporting is in nascent stage. Many STI patients receive treatment at private sectors, thus remains chronically missing in country reports. Stigma, marginalization and criminalization hinder health seeking, mostly with MSM and transgender.
Result: As per global estimate nearly 500,000 curable STIs occur daily in Asia. Inadequacies in case reporting hamper our understanding about exact nature of STI morbidity and evolving pattern of service utilization and safe sex practices, especially among high risk groups, in the region.
Lessons learnt: Selected high volume STI clinics, located at govt. and non-govt. sectors and recognized by national programs can be utilized as STI sentinel sites with adequate resources and technical support to improve and standardize STI case reporting.
Sugata Mukhopadhyay
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