Teen Girls at Risk for STD’s
According to an annual federal report released last month, teen girls aged 15 to 19 accounted for the largest number (409,531) of the 1.5 million reported cases of chlamydia and gonorrhea in the United States in 2008, followed by women aged 20 to 24.
According to the Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance, 2008 report there were approximately 1.2 million reported cases of chlamydia and nearly 337,000 cases of gonorrhea in the United States last year.
Other findings from the report include:
Gonorrhea rates among blacks were higher than any other racial or ethnic group and 20 times higher than among whites. While blacks represent 12 percent of the U.S. population, they accounted for about 71 percent of reported gonorrhea cases, 48 percent of chlamydia cases, and 49 percent of syphilis cases.
Black females aged 15 to 19 had the highest rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea (10,513 per 100,000 and 2,934 per 100,000, respectively), followed by black women aged 20 to 24 (9,373 per 100,000 and 2,770 per 100,000, respectively).
There were 13,500 cases of syphilis in 2008, an increase of nearly 18 percent from 2007. About 63 percent of the cases were among men who have sex with men. However, syphilis rates among women increased 36 percent from 2007 to 2008 (1.1 cases per 100,000 versus 1.5 cases per 100,000), compared with a 15 percent increase among men (6.6 cases per 100,000 versus 7.6 cases per 100,000).
“Research has shown that socioeconomic barriers to quality health care and higher overall prevalence of STDs within minority communities contribute to this pervasive threat. It is imperative that we improve access to effective STD prevention and treatment services in local communities for those who need them most,” said Dr. John M. Douglas Jr., director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of STD Prevention, said in a news release.
Of the almost 19 million new cases of sexually transmitted diseases that occur each year in the United States, almost half are among those aged 15 to 24 years. STDs cost the nation’s health-care system as much as $15.9 billion a year, according to the CDC.
