ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Alaska has the nation's highest rate of Chlamydia and second-highest rate of gonorrhea as the sexually transmitted diseases spread in rural areas, according to the Alaska Division of Public Health.
A total 6,026 cases of the bacterial disease Chlamydia were reported in Alaska in 2010, a 13 percent rise over the previous year. The Alaska case rate of 849 per 100,000 people is more than twice the national rate of 417, the department said.
Reported cases of gonorrhea totaled 1,273 in 2010, a 23 percent increase and counter to a national trend of reduced gonorrheal infections, the state said. Alaska's rate was 179 per 100,000 people, compared to a national rate of 99.
The high rates partly reflect Alaska's demographics, according to Susan Jones, HIV and sexually transmitted disease program coordinator for the state.
"The burden of Chlamydia and gonorrhea is in the young population," Jones said. "Alaska on average has a young population compared to most states."
The diseases are also prevalent among ethnic minorities. The rural regions of the state with the worst rates of infection have largely Alaska native populations, she said.
Lack of timely treatment in those rural areas adds to the problem, Jones said.
The Alaska Medical Board recently enacted a rule change authorizing doctors to prescribe medicine to sexual partners of infected patients even if those partners are not examined, she said.
Chlamydia infections are rising nationally, though not as dramatically as in Alaska, Jones said.
Sometimes the symptoms are mild or not noticeable. "Probably 85 percent of the people who have chlamydia will never know it," Jones said.
Even without symptoms, Chlamydia can have serious consequences, including pelvic inflammatory disease leading to infertility in women, Jones said.
"It's not a benign infection," she said.

Bristol's in ur state, ignorin' ur abstinence-only education.

lol

My mother is awful calls her a "horse".

i'd love to meet your mom

I'm interested to see where this thread goes.

the free clinic wouldn't be the worst place

Next on Deadliest Catch......

Lousy crab fisherman, and their shore leave.

alaskadan: Your response please.

This is good news.

After attending these schools with people who've worked up there - I'm not shocked. Apparently Prudhoe Bay is illicit party central.

Rural Alaska is nothing but meth and bareback fucking.

To bad for alasKAM

STD's are on the rise EVERYWHERE.

A result of several factors occuring at once; namely, the decrease in Americans with health care insurance, the breakdown of the family, and the increase in the availability of cheap yet unsafe prostitution via the internet.

WHERE????

I really just posted this thread for some cheap Kam jokes.

Whereas prostitutes once had to walk the streets, now it's as simple as posting a few cute pics online.

brings many more girls into the profession than would consider it back in the pre internet days.

Can't say I blame them though, given how few living wage jobs exist in America today.

The LaVerne and Shirley of today won't be found in a manufacturing factory, but at Backpage.com .

sad but true.

George W. Bush proclaimed America as an "ownership" society ... now the working and middle classes
have little chance to compete with the wealth classes. Small business has been consumed by big business.

Less people with living wages = less people with fulltime work = less people with healthcare, which reduces self respect
and opens the doorway to unsafe sexual practices via the internet prostitution boom.

I'll add that the wealthy class likes it that way .. less competition from working classes who earn comfortable wages is a good thing. keeps them with bigger pot of the pie.

My little brother told me that pretty much all of the guys in his school want to smoke or deal weed and play video games, maybe work in fast food. The girls want to have the guys give them 40 roses in the bathroom stall for a HJ or BJ.

Breakdown of society .. my brother goes to a decent school in a decent area .. and he's talking about his peers in the advanced classes.

There's so little hope for American youth right now ... just be a whore or a drug dealer.

Yeah that must be it.