How can you protect yourself and others from chlamydia?

Condoms can protect you from being infected with chlamydia during sex. But only if you use them properly and for everything you do – including oral sex, for instance. Dental dams can be used for oral sex.

If you want to share sex toys (a dildo, for example), it’s a good idea to put a condom on them and put a new one on each time someone else uses it.

There are no medications that provide effective protection against chlamydia. Research findings show that gels and vaginal suppositories that kill germs do not prevent chlamydia.

Generally speaking, it’s a good idea to get tested for chlamydia if you’ve noticed symptoms like a watery or pus-like discharge from your penis, vagina, or anus and it’s possible you caught something from a sexual partner. If you have those symptoms and there’s good reason to believe you’ve got chlamydia, your public health insurer (in Germany) will pay for a test at a family doctor’s practice.

Getting tested for chlamydia can make sense even if you haven’t got any symptoms. This is especially true for young women because

• they get it more often than men,
• their infections tend to be symptom-free, and
• they have an increased risk of serious complications like pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) or infertility.

This is why women who have statutory health insurance and are 25 or younger can get a chlamydia test once a year free of charge.

Regular testing is also recommended for anyone with an increased STI risk: Mainly people who have sex with lots of different partners and don’t use condoms. You usually have to pay for these tests yourself.

Testing for chlamydia makes sure infections don’t go untreated and spread and cause complications. Early diagnosis and treatment also protects your sexual partners.

If you’re diagnosed with chlamydia, there are three main things you need to do:

• stop having sex so you don’t infect anyone,
• get treatment quickly, and
• tell anyone you’ve had sex with in the past six months.

Antibiotic treatment for chlamydia typically lasts one week and usually gets rid of the bacteria. You shouldn’t have sex until you finish the treatment. If you’re given a one-day course of antibiotic treatment, you shouldn’t have sex for a week afterward.

There’s no need to disinfect household items or surfaces. Shaking hands, hugging and cuddling are not a problem either.

Talking about a chlamydia infection can be unpleasant and stressful. But it’s important to tell anyone you might have infected. The best thing is to contact everyone you’ve had sex with in the past six months. Then they can get tested and start treatment if necessary. Otherwise, you might end up passing the infection back and forth (known as the “ping pong effect”).

Chlamydia can be passed from the mother’s genitals to the baby during childbirth. When this happens, it’s usually the child’s eyes that are affected (conjunctivitis). But the infection can also affect the middle ear or, more rarely, the lungs. The baby has to be given antibiotics.

To prevent that from happening, all pregnant women with public health insurance (in Germany) are offered a free chlamydia test as part of their first prenatal check-up. If you test positive, you can be given antibiotic treatment before giving birth so the child isn’t infected.