IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aph/ajpbhl/19988881243-1245_4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Pregnant women as a reservoir of undetected sexually transmitted diseases in rural South Africa: Implications for disease control

Author

Listed:
  • Sturm, A.W.
  • Wilkinson, D.
  • Ndovela, N.
  • Bowen, S.
  • Connolly, C.

Abstract

Objectives. This study was undertaken to determine the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in pregnant women in rural South Africa and to determine the value of using abnormal urogenital symptoms to identify infected women. Methods. This was a cross-sectional study of 327 patients attending prenatal clinics. Results. Of the 271 women with complete data, 141 (52%) had at least 1 STD and 49 (18%) had more than 1. Abnormal symptoms were common (n = 225; 83%), but associations were weak, and the positive predictive value of different symptoms for infection ranged from 2% to 54%. Conclusions. Most STDs in rural South African women remain undetected and untreated. As the scope for laboratory diagnosis in resource-poor settings is limited, presumptive treatment of pregnant women and their partners may be a cost-effective option to reduce transmission of STDs and HIV infection.

Suggested Citation

  • Sturm, A.W. & Wilkinson, D. & Ndovela, N. & Bowen, S. & Connolly, C., 1998. "Pregnant women as a reservoir of undetected sexually transmitted diseases in rural South Africa: Implications for disease control," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 88(8), pages 1243-1245.
    • Handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:1998:88:8:1243-1245_4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:1998:88:8:1243-1245_4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.apha.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.