For the sixth consecutive year, reported cases of the sexually transmitted diseases chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis in the U.S. hit an all-time high in 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a new report this week.
"Less than 20 years ago, gonorrhea rates in the U.S. were at historic lows, syphilis was close to elimination, and advances in chlamydia diagnostics made it easier to detect infections. That progress has been lost, due in part to challenges to our public health system," Raul Romaguera, acting director of the CDC's Division of STD Prevention, wrote in an announcement accompanying the report.
According to the report, the U.S. has seen a nearly 20% increase since 2015 in chlamydia cases, which totaled more than 1.8 million in 2019. Additionally, gonorrhea cases have increased by more than 50% since 2015 to over 616,000 cases in 2019. And there were nearly 130,000 cases of syphilis in the U.S. in 2019, marking an increase of more than 70% since 2015.
Together, those STDs accounted for approximately 2.6 million cases in 2019, up from approximately 2.5 million in 2018.
Full article
STDs Hit Record High Again, CDC Says | Healthiest Communities Health News | US News
Of course things were not always this bad. In fact, if you go back to the early days of the Bush administration, syphilis had almost been entirely wiped out, and cases of chlamydia and gonorrhea were at very low levels…