Sexually Transmitted Diseases Are on the Rise

Real Alternatives serves women in Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Michigan through a network of crisis pregnancy centers that provide free counseling, adoption information and referrals, and ongoing material support for the first year of a baby’s life. In addition, the nonprofit offers resources on sexual health, including how to identify and prevent sexually transmitted diseases. 

The number of people affected by sexually transmitted diseases, or STDs, has risen in recent years. The National Institutes of Health has differentiated some two dozen STDs to date and estimates that they infect close to 20 million people annually.

Individuals of any age or social background can contract STDs. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, young adults between 15 and 24 years of age, as well as pregnant women, are among the groups most at risk for common STDs such as gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis. Many women do not know they have contracted an STD, because they may remain symptom-free, yet the complications women experience are typically more severe than those experienced by men.

A major reason for the increase in the number of STD cases is that sexually active individuals today often have a greater number of partners over their lifetime. The CDC points out that the most effective means of avoiding STDs are abstention from sharing needles and abstention from sex outside of a long-term, mutually monogamous relationship.

Sexually Transmitted Diseases Reach Record High in US

Real Alternatives provides easy-to-understand education surrounding pregnancy, parenting, and sexual health. Targeting its services to pregnant women and women of childbearing age, Real Alternatives strives to help its audiences make informed decisions.

According to recent data available through the Sexually Transmitted Diseases Surveillance Report, collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the incidence of gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis has reached a record high in the United States. Chlamydia stands out as the most prevalent of these three diseases, the total number of cases having reached 1.6 million, as compared to 470,000 cases of gonorrhea and close to 28,000 cases of infectious syphilis. 

Close to 50 percent of reported chlamydia cases occur in young women, a percentage significantly higher than the incidence rate in other populations. New diagnoses of syphilis are present primarily in men, the percentage being highest in men who engage in sex with other men (MSM). There were also 600 new cases of syphilis reported in infants in 2016, a rate that indicates the widespread failure of readily available screening procedures.

The most dramatic increase in gonorrhea infection also rests with the male population, and particularly with those in the MSM category. Scientists believe that the 22 percent increase in men with gonorrhea is attributable largely to the resistance of the infection to common antibiotics.