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David Michigan, a French influencer who has more than 19 million followers on Instagram and 450,000 on TikTok, recently said on social media that you only have to urinate and wash after sex to avoid sexually transmitted diseases. (MST). This statement was spotted by videographer Clément Bérut, aka Babor the Elephant on YouTube.
Posted several weeks ago, David Michigan deleted the video the day before yesterday without any erratum, leaving hundreds of thousands of followers with false and potentially dangerous information.
“Only the condom can prevent an STD”
We asked Karine Lacombe, head of the infectious diseases hospital department at Saint-Antoine hospital in Paris, if David Michigan’s claims were scientifically correct. According to the infectious disease specialist, “bathing or urinating after sex to avoid developing a IS like AIDS or genital herpes is absolutely useless. These are diseases that are transmitted by contact, hence the interest of the condom to avoid transmission.. Urinating after intercourse may be advised for women prone to cystitis [ndlr: infection urinaire localisée au niveau de la vessie].
On his site, Public Health France draws up a list of means of prevention concerning viral and bacterial STIs. For the health agency, condoms and screening are the only means of prevention for bacterial STIs. For HIV, various diversified prevention strategies are made available to the population, such as:
- the systematic use of condoms during sexual intercourse;
- screening, which allows rapid treatment if an infection is diagnosed;
- PrEP (meaning pre-exposure prophylaxis);
- TPE (meaning post-exposure treatment);
- for people with HIV, TasP (meaning Treatment as Prevention or in French “treatment as prevention”).
Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is the last stage of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) infection. According to the Pasteur Institute, there is still no effective vaccine against HIV. Different prevention methods can be used as tools to reduce the risk of transmission, such as prevention through treatments called TasP (Treatment as Prevention). Indeed, an effective antiretroviral treatment makes the virus undetectable in the blood, which considerably limits the risk of transmission. To date, no institution, organization, association or health agency recommends urinating or washing the genitals after intercourse to avoid an STI. All recommend wearing a condom and regular screening: ICI, ICI, ICI, ICI or ICI.
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What to do if you think you have been exposed to an STI?
Follow the procedure detailed below by SIDA information service :
Have you been exposed to accidental sexual exposure (BEA) and at risk of HIV transmission?
Do not waste time: post-exposure treatment (TPE) also called prophylactic treatment) can prevent contamination.
Go to a hospital emergency department as quickly as possiblepreferably within the first 4 hours, at the latest within 48 hours.
Hospital emergency services welcome you 24 hours a day to assess the risk with you. During the day, some specialized HIV services and some screening centers (CEGIDD) can support you.
If you can, call before your arrival to notify the emergency department, explaining that you fear that you have been exposed to an HIV risk.
At the reception, say that you are coming for post-exposure HIV treatment. A doctor will see you to assess the risk. He will prescribe a TPE in the event of a major risk.
Contact Sida Info Service free of charge on 0 800 840 800 or by livechat for the address of the emergency department or the HIV service closest to where you are*.
* the free call to Sida Info Service completes but does not replace the patient-doctor relationship
Fact-Check
Affirmation : Urinating and washing after intercourse prevents sexually transmitted diseases.
Verdict : Fake. Urinating and washing the genitals does not change anything in the event of exposure to HIV, for example. The condom remains to this day the most reliable way to limit the development of sexually transmitted diseases (also called STIs).
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