Sexual tourism: implications for travelers and the destination culture

Health care providers in a variety of settings need to improve their ability--along with the capabilities of supporting laboratories, surveillance systems, and services for sex partner management--to diagnose and treat STI. Whether the travel health care sector, as such, is willing to take on the additional burden of STI-related screening and risk reduction counseling has been raised by some authors. Currently, the burden of providing formalized STI care falls on the public sector; however, in the United States, most STI are actually diagnosed in the offices of private physicians. Given that the United States has the highest STI rates of any industrialized country, the undeniable synergy between STI and HIV acquisition, the failure of many American providers to screen for C trachomatis despite clear guidelines, the global resurgence of syphilis and extension of resistant N gonorrhoeae and of HIV, and the risk behaviors consistently reported by travelers, it is hard to argue against travel specialists' joining the daunting battle against these recalcitrant infections and their often devastating consequences. Most of the relevant diagnostic tests are relatively affordable, and patient-centered risk-reduction counseling, once mastered, can be brief and easily integrated into the overall conversation about protecting oneself during travel.