Travelling across Africa and throughout the world has never been so easy. In just a few hours you can fly from Nairobi (JKIA) to Accra (Ghana) via Lagos (Nigeria). This ease of travel comes with the need to have your itinerary well planned and keeping your travel checklist in order. This proper preparation will save you the trouble of a nasty experience such as being denied transit at an airport just because you failed to check the requirements beforehand.
You always need to check the visa requirements for all the countries that your flight lands, have an updated health cover and have enough money to use throughout the journey until your return. These simple yet critical requirements are rather obvious for anyone who has had international travel. However, have you thought about your risk for contracting STIs during travel?
Complementing Health cover with STDs self-testing kits during your travel
Just to surprise you a bit, there is something which you always need to consider so important but end up ignoring. Think about this, while travel health insurance is important, it only helps you in the event you get sick during the journey. In a nutshell, the health cover becomes usable only when you get sick while travelling. Although health insurance is very important while travelling, you can complement it with STI self-testing kits in your travel checklist. It may sound a weird idea to just pack a test kit for gonorrhea, syphilis, genital herpes, human papilloma virus (HPV), chlamydia or even HIV/AIDs but don’t you think that such test kits give you control over your sexual health even when travelling? Of course, they are important. That is why they are among the extra things that you need to add to the list of necessities for your travel.
Risks of STDs in international travel
Depending on the period which you have planned to take at your destination, there is always a likelihood of getting into an intimate sexual relationship with someone with whom you have had a long-distance relationship for a while or just an escort. An international traveller is likely to engage in sexually risky behavior since nobody including the authorities at your destination can stop such intimate relationships. Even amidst the freedom, you still have a duty to protect yourself through carrying the self-testing kits for STDs with you, using them correctly and consistently every time you travel and is faced with a situation that results in sexual intimacy.
STDs Self testing kits as a preventive intervention during travel
Self-testing kits for STDs in themselves will not prevent you from contracting the STDs but they tell you whether your sexual partner has an STD or not. In essence, they keep you informed about each other which then results makes your sensual experience more satisfying and keeps you in full control of your health. From the test results, you can decide to use condoms or desist from engaging in sex after all so that you protect yourself from contracting the disease.
