 Sexually transmitted diseases are the uninvited guests always ready to crash the party, even though no one wants them around. We have strong evidence that sexually transmitted infections have been a defining feature of the entire history of human civilization. We have seen skeletons bearing syphilis marks, classical literature dedicated to gonorrhea and loads of royal gossip about used infections. Sexually transmitted diseases or STDs have been a subject of medical fascination and social conversation for that matter for thousands of years. Even today, we can't seem to get enough of the historical bingo of who contracted what. Stick around as we delve into a topic often whispered but seldom discussed openly, right here on Standard Time. We are here to discuss STIs today which is a nice program for a December whatever time of the day anyone might tune in. I would put a little blame on HIV because HIV took the show 30 years ago, everybody was speaking about HIV and AIDS and we somehow forgot about other STIs. And most of the people who want an STI screening only think of HIV. Screening for HIV is okay but screening for syphilis and screening for gonorrhea and chlamydia is also very important and it is somehow missing in the community. Everybody is focused on HIV, nowadays HIV well it's not a curable disease but it's a completely manageable disease. We do know that the medication, the anti-retrovider medication against HIV is very modern. I agree that HIV also in some point did some harm for treating another STI. Maybe I will shortly talk about the PrEP here. Because you know this focus from HIV and all this funding and huge money invested in the HIV field, maybe I'm not a doctor so I don't know but this is the result so we have the PrEP and now PrEP is used but it's protecting only from HIV, it's not protecting from another STI. PrEP is the best option but it's not only one option. We still have condoms as option and we still have four communities as sex workers, community led services, community outreach, condom distribution so all of these services are very valuable and very helping in protection of STI and HIV together. So when it comes to sexual health I think the challenges are twofold. So you have people who struggle to access services because they can't get appointments because of long wait times, because of embarrassments, fear of judgments. So there are all those factors and then there are the people who don't even know they need to access services, right? And that's that kind of lack of awareness and education in general that exists. So whatever it is that we do, whether it's in clinic testing or at home testing, I think general education needs to be key. The benefit of at home testing is that it makes it convenient for people and it removes some of those access barriers. Confidentiality is breached in that sense so if somebody receives a preliminary positive test result then they need to have that diagnosis confirmed in a clinic with a second blood sample that's taken from a vein, not like a pinprick blood test that you do at home. It's a starting point and it gets people thinking along the right lines and it gets infections picked up and hopefully treated much more quickly. So let's talk about sex and sexually transmitted infections. We have antibiotics resistant super gonorrhea, the wide array of HPV viruses, chlamydia on every corner and more for you to discuss. But don't fret, we'll also talk about solutions, prevention, screening, treatments and importantly sexual education. Let's talk about sex education. You made the series? No. Kidding. Which season? They realized that actually half of the population is boys and sometimes their partners are not girls. They're going to be so mad at you, you called them Eastern European. Oh yes, especially Slovenians. Am I talking something crazy? Don't ask me. If I really wanted to create educational content that was going to have that type of impact, I needed to go where people were and they weren't in the hospital, they were on their phones. You will have the same life expectancy and the same life quality with medication as anyone who doesn't have HIV. If we could remove even a fraction of the stigma that still surrounds sexual health and STIs, I think everybody's lives would be better. Prevention is so much cheaper than having to manage late stage complications and cure. I will submit this to Santa Claus tomorrow.