On 3th of November in Sarajevo Open Centre we had an opportunity to learn something more about sexually transmitted diseases, its prevention  and opportunities for having a happy, fullfilling life of people with sexually transmitted infections.

Dejan Filipović, who is a peer educator, in an interesting and relaxed manner shared with us extremly important information for healthy and successful  life of all persons.

The devastating impact of stigma is obvious towards persons with sexually transmitted diseases, especially those  with HIV virus or AIDS.  Through this workshop and discussion, we repeated the fact that risk groups do not exist, but only risk behaviors – and what they are.

Dejan presented the examples of  symptoms of sexually transmitted infections, and  all other ways of how sexually transmitted infections can  be transmitted.

We put emphasis on the less mentioned infections, especially  Hepatitis B and C – how to prevent it and how to treat it.

We also talked about prejudices in society and LGBTI community  towards  people who are HIV positive. One of the participants noticed that he heard for so  many times  that people who are ”declaratively friendly” are giving  discriminatory comments about HIV positive persons.  It seems that it is necessary  to work more on  combating this kind of prejudices and discriminatory practices. .

We hope that these kinds of workshops  will be organized in other places  too, in accordance to the needs for education and discussions on the topics that are related to the health.

Commemorating 01.12. – world AIDS day, we are publishing this text in the hope that the process of raising   awareness on sexually transmitted diseases will be continued and that stigmatization will decrease.