Record rates of sexually transmitted diseases hit US

Of all the reported cases of chlamydia and gonorrhea, more than half of them have involved the young people aged 25 and below. That is according to Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention for the CDC.

What’s causing the surge?

These STDs seriously impacts one’s long term health including fertility problems and chronic pain. It is even more problematic when a young person gets infected because they can pass it to the young ones at birth. The result is more severe with stillbirth or birth defects.

According to Mermin, the state’s decision to reduce its expenditure on STD care and prevention programs has been at the foreground in pushing for the increase. He said that their ability to combat the STDs is solely determined by the available infrastructure. If it is allowing, then they can comfortable fight down the upward trend. But unfortunately "More than half of state and local STD programs have experienced budget cuts. In 2012, 20 health departments reported having to close their STD clinics,” he says.

In addition, the CDC expressed fear that the cases are increasing at a time when preventive systems in the nation have experienced significant erosion.

Troubling rates of increase

As per the report, the rate at which syphilis is increasing is quite troubling. In just a span of two years from 2014 to 2015, there was a 19 percent increasing with 2015 recording a total of 23,872 new cases. Syphilis has quite a strong rising trend within the past few decades but the rising trend in gonorrhea and chlamydia is more recent. 2015 recorded 395,216 new gonorrhea cases while chlamydia hit more than 1.5 million cases.

“Most STD cases continue to go undiagnosed and untreated, putting people at risk for severe and often irreversible health consequences,” the CDC said in a statement. The economic burden to the U.S. health-care system is nearly $16 billion a year, according to the CDC.

The high risk groups are the young people as well as the bisexual men. There is also another troubling trend in which more infants are born with syphilis. That is as a result of the mothers being infected during the pregnancy period.

Here is a breakdown of the 2015 data:

  • The gays had the highest new cases of gonorrhea and a number of syphilis forms.
  • Children born with syphilis went up by 6 percent
  • More women got diagnosed with syphilis compared to the men (27 percent)
  • Most Americans of 15 to 24 years had the highest rates of gonorrhea (over half) and chlamydia (nearly two-thirds) diagnosis.

In efforts to fight back this, the officials requested the care givers to ensure that STD screening is a standard in medical care, more so in expectant mothers. Regular individual STD tests are important in addition to using condoms. 

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