Worcester County in Panic as STD Rates Increase

Convincing your child to talk about sex is a difficult thing. Sex health talk and getting then to listen to you as you talk about this critical subject is almost impossible. Even as these challenges remain apparent to us, health experts maintain that it is critical to have a sex health talk with your young ones. According to Dr. Mattie Castiel, both physicians and parents have a challenge with the matter. They all find it hard to initiate the conversation to a group of youngsters who apparently know more than their age courtesy of the Internet.

Castiel is the commissioner of health and human services in Worcester. She says that she has two boys and personally has a first-hand experience in the matter, both as a physician and as a parent. “It wasn’t easy talking to them and when I made an effort to talk to them, they weren’t ready to listen. Sometimes I would carry with me a small bag of condoms, but that wasn’t an easy thing to do either. It grossed all of them,” she says.

“Despite my knowledge in the matter as a physician, I still have a challenge talking to my kids about sex. So how do you really do that?”

Worrying Rates of STIs

Even as parents continue to debate over what could be the best way to introduce Sex health talk in their loved ones, the infection rates at the national level are worrying. Infections that we had earlier on thought are gone have from nowhere re-emerged.

Worcester County has seen a steady rise in the rates of common STDs such as Chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis from 2015 till now. The County’s 2015 health data shows that there were 200 cases of gonorrhea, 2,171 reported cases of Chlamydia and 65 cases of syphilis. These numbers doubled in 2017 and indicate no sign of declining as we complete the first half of 2018.

Healthcare providers were sent a clinical advisory in April this year, an advisory which showed that syphilis and gonorrhea rates had skyrocketed.

Why Is this Happening? 

The one thing that all health professionals agree on is that STIs have an upward trend. However, they tend to disagree when it comes to exactly who is to blame. The one obvious reason which takes higher precedence is that very few people use protection.

Others suggest that the idea of screening and diagnosis of different types of STIs being inconsistent may also be blamed. The experts explain that this facilitates more easily transmittable infections and diseases.

You are advised to regularly see your physician and get tested several times. The frequency of this testing should even be higher for the LGBTQ community. All populations are advised to practice safe sex.