How Can We Reduce STDs Among Adolescences Between 12-25 Years And Women Between 26-45 Years In Banjor Community In Monrovia, Liberia?

How Can We Reduce STDs Among Adolescences Between 12-25 Years And Women Between 26-45 Years In Banjor Community In Monrovia, Liberia?

In Liberia and Sierra Leone, where I grew up sexually active teens experience high rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and women face excessive risk. STIs are more likely to remain undetected in teens and women than in men, resulting in delayed diagnosis and treatment, and untreated STIs are more likely to lead to complications in women, such as pelvic inflammatory disease and cervical cancer.

In Banjor community Monrovia Liberia, many teens and women do not have money to go to health centers and hospitals to get tested for STIs. Poverty and other socioeconomic factors contribute to STI risk in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Teens and women living in poverty may not perceive the risk of STIs or may not practice preventive behaviors. As most of us from Liberia and Sierra Leone know by now that cultural traditions that value women’s passivity and subordination also diminish the ability of many of our daughters, sister and mothers to adequately protect themselves, to refuse unwanted sex, and to negotiate condom use.

As domestic violence is big in these two countries, dating violence and sexual assault play a role in STI transmission in our villages, towns and cities. Majority of our daughter, sisters and mothers who experience dating violence are less likely to use condoms and feel more uncomfortable negotiating condom use. I have talked to some of my former story tellers who were female ex-fighters who I have taken to hospital in Liberia had been physically or sexually abused.

In Liberia and Sierra Leone, we need to improve the health conditions of teens and women because STDs are a very serious problem not only because they are widespread , but also because they may have delayed, long term consequences, including poor maternal health, ectopic pregnancy, infant illness and death, cervical cancer, infertility and increases susceptibility to HIV.

Many teens and women are really suffering these and other effects of STDS and hinder their ability to provide for themselves and their families and also contribute to their communities. How can we reduce STIs among adolescences between 12-25 years and women between 26-45 years in Banjor Community in Monrovia, Liberia?

Now am looking for any foundations, organizations and individuals who will help us set a health center for teens and women to obtain professional assistance to prevent STIs and avoid transmitting infection and receives treatments. 

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