POCATELLO — A public health agency is offering free testing this month to help combat the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
Southeast Idaho Public Health (SIPH) will offer free testing for Hepatitis C, HIV and Syphilis for the entire month of June. Anyone can call and make an appointment at a SIPH office, located in Pocatello, Blackfoot, American Falls, Preston, Montpelier and Arco.
“We’re very nonjudgmental. We don’t worry about why people are getting tested or what their practices are,” said Alison Wiens, a SIPH public health nurse.
June isn’t the only month that SIPH offers free testing. They offer testing for four months out of the year, in January, March, June and December. While testing for chlamydia and gonorrhea isn’t free, Wiens said that people often come in and pay for those tests while also getting the free tests.
Wiens said the goal behind free testing is to give people more information about their health.
“We just want to get people tested because more people who know their status, the less things are gonna get transmitted,” Wiens said.
Wiens said that generally speaking, anyone who has had sex without a condom and/or injected drugs with a needle could have been exposed to one of these diseases, and should get tested.
“The thing is to consider is not just somebody who’s had sex but anybody who has partners who may be having sex with other people,” Wiens said.
Following CDC guidelines, “anyone between the ages of about 13 to 65 should get tested for HIV sometime in their life. Now, if they’re at higher risk, they could get tested more often,” Wiens said.
People who are at a higher risk include homeless people, incarcerated people, sex workers and men who have sex with men. Wiens said they have people who are at a higher risk who test regularly, about every three to six months.
Hepatitis C is spread when someone comes in contact with blood from an infected person. HIV is spread through sexual activity and sharing needles and syphilis is spread by contact between moist skin areas anywhere on or inside the body. People who come in can be tested for all three of these diseases or one or two of them.
This scheduled testing isn’t the only thing SIPH does to combat the spread of STDs. They also do testing for inmates at the jail every couple of weeks.
“We provide condoms to anybody who wants them in the community,” Wiens said. They distribute condoms to physicians offices, bars and they hand them out at their office locations.
When people come in for testing, they can expect to talk about their risk factors to help them decide what they want to be tested for, “and then they can kind of make an informed decision,” Wiens said.
If people want more information about SIPH’s office locations, that can be found at their website.
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Discovered on: 2023-06-07 00:15:52
Source: SIPH offers free testing to combat the spread of STDs
