Description

Daphne Joseph, a registered nurse with more than two decades experience dealing with AIDS and other STIs, discusses how women can better protect themselves against STIs by insisting on having thier sexual partners full helath status.

Transcript

How can women protect themselves? Daphne Joseph: One thing in our clinic that we really try to emphasis is empowering the women to be able to protect themselves because a lot of younger women, specially, have that trouble in negotiating for - with the male, specially if it's an older male, negotiating for protection. So we have the female condom so they can protect themselves. It's inserted like a diaphragm, if anybody knows, what an older diaphragm looks like. Inserted up the vagina, where there is a plastic slip so the penis goes in unprotected but the woman's whole vaginal vault is protected, cervical and vaginal vault areas protected and that's a great way to practice safe sex if you can't negotiate with the male to have on a condom. Is it difficult for women to initiate that conversation? Daphne Joseph: It's really hard to do for most, for a lot of people because it's not a subject a lot of feel comfortable talking about. So what we try to do is talk to, specially the younger people that come in, that we are trying to do prevention way. Talk to them about respecting themselves and empowering themselves that they are person worthy of respect, and the should - they expose to anything that can a life long thing they will have to deal with, say like herpes or HIV, and if you are close enough to the person to engage in sex, you should be close enough to have that conversation where you can talk about your status, whether or not you have been tested and say, this is nothing - I want to be protected at all times and negotiate for the use of the condoms. Sometime there is some anger I think between people if they are confronted within they, that's not the kind of person you want to be having that relationship with. So empower the women and also the men . The young men need to be educated to this is something that I need you to think about.