SEXUALLY transmitted infections (STIs) is prevalent in rural areas and will eventually become the route of HIV to follow as found in the study done by the PNG Medical Research Institute.
The rural population faces a high risk of contracting the virus if nothing is being done to prevent it from reaching those areas.
The findings of this study conducted in 11 sites of 10 provinces were revealed during the Medical Symposium on Tuesday.
Senior Research Scientist Tony Lupiwa stressed that more focus should be on the rural areas in terms of HIV/AIDS awareness through the media rather than concentrate too much on the urban areas.
He said the Health Department must establish user friendly STI clinics in the rural areas for people to access services, facilities and information about the virus.
And regular monitoring of STI and HIV rates in the rural and urban areas must be consistent.
The team of researchers also made an assessment on people’s knowledge about the ABC (Abstinence, Be faithful and Condom usage) prevention method and how HIV is transmitted.
From the statistics collected 45% of people learnt about the ABC methods from health workers and 5% from their sexual partners as their sources of information, 22% of females and 24% of males knew the complete ABC methods and 92% of people had no idea at all what the ABC methods were about.

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