Lessons of past helping curb Marion County syphilis outbreak
Posted on August 27, 2008
Filed Under Gay News Blog
A few months ago, Marion County health officials noticed a disturbing trend: More cases of syphilis had occurred in the first three months of the year than in all of 2007.
The sudden uptick raised a specter of fear. Could Indianapolis be experiencing another outbreak akin to the one in 1999 that earned the city the unwanted distinction of being No. 1 in the nation in syphilis cases?
In just four years, Health Department officials had transformed that statistic. By 2003, incidences of syphilis in Indianapolis were lower than in all other large U.S. cities, and they remained so through 2005.
But as of the middle of August, Indianapolis had 89 cases of syphilis, more than in any year since 2001.
Marion County Health Department officials, however, say that in recent weeks they’ve seen what they hope proves to be a tapering of cases.
“For right now, we’re looking like we’re able to contain the infection,” said Dr. Virginia Caine, director of the agency. “We’re cautiously optimistic.”
That success, they say, comes largely thanks to lessons learned during the 1999 outbreak and an ensuing one the next year.
“That gave us a leg up, not to need a learning curve to figure out what to do,” said Dan Brooks, a county Health Department disease intervention specialist who worked through both outbreaks.
In many respects, the outbreaks bear few similarities. In 1999 and 2000, the bulk of the cases occurred in three ZIP codes and were split between men and women. About 95 percent of the patients were black, and many of them were prostitutes or women trading sex for drugs.
This year, the bulk of the cases have occurred in white men, most of whom have sex with other men. More than half were HIV-positive.
Combating a sexually transmitted disease such as syphilis is no easy task. Called the “great imitator” because it resembles many other conditions, syphilis can have symptoms that are insidiously mild. More of Lessons of past helping curb Marion County syphilis outbreak
Indianapolis Star, United States
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