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County
Plans to Fight STDs |
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Los Angeles County today
is rolling out a bilingual awareness campaign to help curb recent rising
rates of syphilis,
chlamydia, and
gonorrhea. Half the $1.3 million
campaign's resources will go to advertising; the rest will be used to help
staff cope with the anticipated increase in screening and partner
notification.
The campaign will include promotional drink coasters, murals, and sidewalk
chalk art, as well as billboards and bus ads. The people the county is
targeting are gay and bisexual men, African-American men and women, and
Latinas - those most affected by the STD increases, said Dr. Jonathan
Fielding, director of the county Department of Health.
Gay and bisexual men comprised more than two-thirds of the county's roughly
1,200 syphilis cases in 2005, representing a 365 percent increase since
2001. Sixty-seven percent of the county's female chlamydia cases were
African Americans, and 65 percent of its female gonorrhea cases were African
Americans or Latinas.
Reacting to the sharp increase in syphilis cases recorded in 2005, the
county last year ordered a new campaign to replace the one starring "Phil
the syphilis sore," which ran between 2002 and 2005.
One poster in the new campaign features a man standing outside a shower, a
towel around his waist, with the slogan: "Check Yourself: Don't Assume
You're Coming Off Clean." Posters about chlamydia show black women and
Latinas with the note: "I know that hooking up can have a downside. That
over 30,000 women in L.A. get chlamydia every year. That chlamydia is
curable."
Organizations, including AIDS Project Los Angeles and AIDS Healthcare
Foundation, stressed the need for continuous efforts to keep STDs on the
public's radar. "We have to set up a system in which every sexually active
person gets screened at least every six months, the same as having our teeth
cleaned," said AHF President Michael Weinstein.
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Los Angeles Times
(06.26.07):: Mary Engel |
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We are providing the above information as a public
service only. Providing synopses of key scientific articles and lay
media reports on HIV/AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases
does not constitute endorsement. The above summaries were prepared
without conducting any additional research or investigation into the
facts and statements made in the articles being summarized, and
therefore readers are expressly cautioned against relying on the
validity or invalidity of any statements made in these summaries. This
CDC HIV/STD/TB Prevention News
Update also includes information from CDC and
other government agencies, such as background on MMWR articles, fact
sheets and announcements. |
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