The World Just Got Its First Global STI Data Map. Here’s the Personal Version.

The World Health Organization has been consolidating something that’s been missing for a long time: a single, unified view of STI prevalence and surveillance data across the globe, covering chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, trichomoniasis, and herpes simplex virus type 2, region by region.For public health researchers, this kind of consolidation is a big deal. Before it, the data lived in scattered national reports, inconsistent formats, and gaps where no one was tracking anything at all. Bringing it together means better screening strategy, better resource allocation, and a clearer picture of where the need actually is.

A smaller version of the same problem

Here’s the thing. That same fragmentation exists at the individual level too, just at a much smaller scale. Most people’s sexual health history lives in a mix of places: a folder on a provider’s portal they forgot the password to, a text message screenshot from two years ago, a memory of “I think I got tested sometime last spring.” Nothing consolidated, nothing verified, nothing easy to actually use when it matters.

If it takes an organization the size of the WHO to build a complete global picture out of scattered data, it’s not surprising that most of us are walking around with an incomplete picture of our own.

What a personal version looks like

Protecht is built to be that consolidated view, but for one person instead of the whole world. Connect your provider once, through Apple Health, and every result you’ve had pulls into one place: chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, herpes, HIV, hepatitis B, HPV, trichomoniasis, plus vaccination records.

  • 8 STI conditions tracked in one verified view
  • Vaccination records included alongside test results
  • You decide what to share and with whom
  • Nothing stored on Protecht’s servers, ever

All of it verified, all of it current, all of it yours to control. You decide what to share and with whom. Nothing sits on our servers.

Why this matters more than it sounds like it should

It’s easy to underestimate how much friction comes from not having this information organized. A provider portal password you don’t remember. A test result buried in an email from eighteen months ago. None of that friction is dramatic on its own, but it adds up to the same outcome: when the moment actually calls for sharing your status, most people are working from memory instead of records.

It’s the same principle behind the WHO’s consolidation effort, just built for a person instead of a planet: you can’t act on data you don’t actually have in front of you.

Receipts, Not Promises.

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WHOSTI DataHealth RecordsVerified ResultsReceipts Not Promises

Sources: WHO Global HIV, Hepatitis and STIs Programmes — STI Epidemiology dashboard. Note: reporting referenced a newly consolidated “STI Prevalence Atlas,” but a dedicated WHO Atlas launch announcement could not be independently verified as a primary source. Copy below describes WHO’s consolidated data work generally rather than asserting a specific named product launch.

Only 10% of Women Got Tested Last Year — Here’s Why That Number Won’t Move Without a Real Conversation

The fifth edition of the Hologic Global Women’s Health Index came out this March, and one number in it is hard to look away from: only 10% of women surveyed said they had been tested for an STI in the past year. That is down slightly from the Index’s first year of tracking, meaning the number has not meaningfully moved in five years of measurement. Not up. Not down in a way anyone would call progress. Just stuck.

That is not a story about women not caring about their health. It is a story about a system that has made testing feel optional, awkward, or simply beside the point, right up until it very much is not.

Why the Number Is Stuck

There is not one single reason 90% of women are not getting tested annually. It is a stack of smaller reasons that add up. Doctors often do not bring it up unless a patient asks first, and a lot of patients assume that if it mattered, their provider would have mentioned it. Annual physicals frequently do not include STI screening by default, especially for women who are not pregnant or not presenting symptoms. And the conversation itself, the one where you tell a doctor or a partner you would like to get tested, still carries a weight it should not, because testing has long been coded as something you do when something is wrong rather than something you do because your body deserves routine attention.

New guidance from King County Public Health, published this January, points at part of the fix. Rather than treating STI screening as a once-a-year box to check regardless of circumstances, the guidelines set a baseline of at least annual testing for sexually active people, then recommend more frequent testing, every three to six months, for anyone with risk factors that make a longer gap less useful. Those factors include things like a recent STI diagnosis, more than ten partners in the past year, or inconsistent barrier use. It is a more realistic model than a flat annual reminder, because sexual health does not move on a calendar. It moves based on what is actually happening in someone’s life.

The Missing Piece Is the Conversation, Not the Test

Testing itself has gotten easier over the past decade. Clinics are more accessible, at-home kits exist, insurance coverage has broadened in a lot of places. The bottleneck is not really access anymore, in most cases. It is the conversation around it: deciding to go, telling a partner why, and then, afterward, actually sharing the result with the people who need to know it.

That last step is where a lot of good intentions quietly stall out. Someone gets tested, gets a negative result, and then the information just sits in a patient portal or a paper printout that never makes it into an actual conversation with a partner. Not because anyone is hiding anything, but because there is no easy, low-stakes way to share it. Sending a screenshot feels either like overkill or like proof no one asked for. Saying “I got tested, I’m negative” out loud works, but it puts the whole weight of trust on the listener with nothing to verify it against.

This is the exact gap Protecht was built to close. A verified result, connected securely from participating labs, shareable with a partner in a few taps, no screenshot, no paper trail, no awkward follow-up questions about when exactly “recently” was. The testing part still happens the same way it always has, at a clinic, through a provider. What changes is what happens after: the sharing gets as easy as the testing should have been all along.

Moving the Number

If the 10% figure is going to actually move, and not just get reported on again next spring with the same disappointing footnote, it is going to take more than encouraging people to test. People need a reason that feels immediate, not abstract. Making the results genuinely useful, shareable, and easy to act on gives testing a payoff beyond a number on a portal nobody checks.

Routine testing paired with routine, low-friction sharing is what actually closes gaps like this one. Not another awareness campaign asking people to care more. They already do. What is missing is the infrastructure to make that care count for something the next time it matters, in a conversation with a partner who deserves real information instead of a guess.

Sources

Receipts, not promises.

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