What You Should Know About Sexually Transmitted Diseases
HIV and other Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) such as viral hepatitis remain among the leading causes of morbidity and death in Florida as in the United States and account for substantial health care spending in both the public and private sector.
Following are STD facts:
- Twenty million new sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) occur each year with half of them among young people ages 15–24.
- Health care providers in Florida are now required to counsel and offer pregnant women an HIV test.
- An STD can be more serious, even life-threatening, for mother and baby if a woman becomes infected while pregnant.
- One out of every four sexually active female teens has an STD.
- More cases of syphilis were reported on females between the ages of 20–29 than any other age group in Florida.
- Approximately 23% of all new HIV diagnoses are among young people ages 13–24.
- Three out of every four reported STD cases in Florida were in the 15–29 age range.
- 58% of reported STD cases in Florida were under the age of 25.
- One out of every 20 persons with a reportable STD in Florida is co-infected with HIV.
- An estimated one in six Americans ages 14–49 have genital herpes infection and up to 90 percent of them don’t even know they have it.
- Floridians between the ages of 15–24 represented only 13 percent of Florida’s population in 2015, but accounted for 64 percent of reported cases of Chlamydia infections.
- Some young people, including those who have had abstinence education, consider oral and anal sex to be abstinent behaviors and do not realize these behaviors present risks to STD transmission.
As mental health practitioners, it is incumbent upon us to encourage our client to talk with his/her partner about risk factors and safer sex methods to reduce chances of getting an STD, and to make an appointment for STD testing.
AA Ross Family Counseling has a 3-hr board approved CEU course that covers an overview of HIV-AIDS and covers statistics, HIV transmission, testing, information about opportunistic infections, and prevention.
Sign up for the 3 Hour HIV/AIDS