This is an epidemic that is
always going to be around and severe. In 2008 there were 20 million new
incidents just in the United States alone. 20 million is a huge number especially
just counting the U.S. I always knew sexually transmitted diseases were a
big deal but I did not know how many cases there actually were, and this was
2008. The medical cost for this disease alone was about 16 billion. The other study
was that there was a prevalence of 110 million.
According to
the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, the American Social Health Association,
and the CDC, the U.S has the highest rate of STIs in the world. I think that
this is very surprising because we have protection and most people should be
taking advantage of it where as other countries may not have the right
necessities. Catherine Lindsey Satterwhite who is a CDC epidemiologist, said
that people ages 15-24 account for about half of all sexually transmitted
infections in the U.S. Satterwhite also said that preventing these STI’s could
save the nation billions of dollars each year. Matthew Golden had a different
opinion than Satterwhite. He said that most viral and bacterial infections
including HIV have either stabilized or have dropped. He said that the “epidemic”
that Catherine Satterwhite speaks of is more related to HPV and chlamydia. He
thinks that there should be more strategies to prevent this from happening by
having school-based access to the HPV vaccine. I completely agree with this and
I think everyone, especially teens should take the HPV vaccine, it should be
mandatory. In 2011, studies show that only 35% of American girls ages 13-17 have
gotten the HPV vaccine. The boys rate was 28%. What is interesting is that
Austrialia’s National HPV vaccine program provides it for girls ages 12-13 at
school and as a result 72% of girls received the vaccine by age 15. Boys were
also added to this program this year, 2013. Americans should take this article
very seriously, because it is quite shocking and it can defiantly happen to
anyone.
Amanda, I really enjoyed reading this article and your reaction to it. I think people sometimes forget about sexually transmitted diseases and wouldn't necessarily think of many as an epidemic when in fact they are. I thought it was interesting how the study was done in the US and we still had that large of a number of people who suffered from them. You would think since we are such a successful country with hundreds of ways to protect ourselves from diseases like this, the number would be a bit lower. Its a big eye opener for teens our age and especially ones going off to college next year. Studies say 1 out of even 5 kids in college have an STD..gross!
ReplyDeleteHey Amanda, props for taking on such a serious and often shushed-out topic in our society. Sexually-Transmitted Diseases are a lot more common than most people would like to admit, and one of the best ways of preventing them is bringing them out into the open through talking and testing. While the HIV/AIDS epidemic is still occurring there are undercurrents of more infrequent diseases such as herpes. I agree with you about how schools should allow their students to access vaccines for such diseases, but I disagree with you about making vaccines mandatory. I don’t think a HPV vaccine should be mandatory because any relatively new vaccine hasn’t had enough time to show some of it’s long-term side effects, and that worries me. In GSA we have been talking about sex-education in schools, and how starting to educate people on protection and STI’s earlier would prevent more problems later, even if it made some of their parents uncomfortable. We’d like to push for a lighter version of “Decisions” in middle schools, and learn from other countries like you said who have successfully provided these resources for their students, yet I don’t think we’re anywhere close. Great article!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this article because I feel like high schoolers know about STDs but do not connect it to their own lives. Most people hear the warnings but do not think that they are at risk. Reading the statistics of how many new cases there are makes it that much realer. Anyone can get one and people need to be more careful about protecting themselves.
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