Community Awareness and Surveillance of STI Transmission

Increasing numbers of people are being diagnosed each year with bacterial STIs such as gonorrhoea, syphilis and chlamydia. Researchers believe that many of these infections are being passed on through oral sexual practices (e.g., oral sex, rimming, deep kissing, spit play). The aim of this study was to help us understand the perspectives and experiences of people who attend sexual health services on oral STI transmission.

We found that people who had previously been offered an oral STI test were more aware of the risk of oral STI transmission than those who didn’t. People had questions about oral transmission that they weren’t comfortable asking their health care providers. They desired health care providers initiate these conversations to ensure they got the right care. Once aware of the risk they were generally happy to adopt strategies to reduce their risk that didn’t impact the pleasure of sex for themselves or their sexual partners.