Partner notification for sexually transmitted infections in developing countries: a systematic review

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Sibylle Kristensen¹  Eric Chamot¹  Kim Streatfield²  Nazmul Alam³  Sten H Vermund⁴ 

[1] Department of Epidemiology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA;ICDDR, B: Centre for Health and Population Research, Bangladesh, Dhaka, Bangladesh;ICDDR, B: Centre for Health and Population Research, Bangladesh, Dhaka, Bangladesh;Department of Epidemiology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA;Vanderbilt University Institute for Global Health, Nashville, TN, USA;

关键词: Index Patient;    Casual Partner;    Gross National Income;    Partner Notification;    Trichomoniasis;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-10-19

 received in 2009-06-24, accepted in 2010-01-18,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe feasibility and acceptability of partner notification (PN) for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in developing countries was assessed through a comprehensive literature review, to help identify future intervention needs.MethodsThe Medline, Embase, and Google Scholar databases were searched to identify studies published between January 1995 and December 2007 on STI PN in developing countries. A systematic review of the research extracted information on: (1) willingness of index patients to notify partners; (2) the proportion of partners notified or referred; (3) client-reported barriers in notifying partners; (4) infrastructure barriers in notifying partners; and (5) PN approaches that were evaluated in developing countries.ResultsOut of 609 screened articles, 39 met our criteria. PN outcome varied widely and was implemented more often for spousal partners than for casual or commercial partners. Reported barriers included sociocultural factors such as stigma, fear of abuse for having an STI, and infrastructural factors related to the limited number of STD clinics, and trained providers and reliable diagnostic methods. Client-oriented counselling was found to be effective in improving partner referral outcomes.ConclusionsSTD clinics can improve PN with client-oriented counselling, which should help clients to overcome perceived barriers. The authors speculate that well-designed PN interventions to evaluate the impact on STI prevalence and incidence along with cost-effectiveness components will motivate policy makers in developing countries to allocate more resources towards STI management.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Alam et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.