No reason not to know: take advantage of STD testing

By: The Traveler Editorial Board

Posted: 9/8/08

We all heard the findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study released last March: one in four girls between ages 14 and 19 in the U.S. is infected with at least one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases.

Some of those diseases - like genital herpes - are incurable.

Some - like chlamydia - can lead to infertility.

And others - like human papillomavirus, which has infected nearly half of all sexually active people - are alarmingly common.

Scary stuff. Perhaps even more frightening is that the CDC reports many infected men and women are unaware of their conditions.

Take the "silent" chlamydia: about three-quarters of infected women and half of infected men show no symptoms at all.

The easiest - and most obvious - way UA students can try to "avoid the transmission of STDs is to abstain from sexual contact, or to be in a long-term mutually monogamous relationship with a partner who has been tested and is known to be uninfected," according to the CDC Web site.

Everyone knows that.

But for the many young adults who reject the abstinence-only method, some form of birth control - like latex, male condoms - is the next best option.

However, because condoms aren't 100 percent effective, and because oral contraceptives don't protect against STDs, sexually active students still face a risk of contracting an STD.

And everyone knows that, too.

But despite our knowledge of the frequency of STDs and the various means of prevention, not everyone is willing to get tested.

"While substantial progress has been made in preventing, diagnosing and treating certain STDs in recent years, [the] CDC estimates that approximately 19 million new infections occur each year, almost half of them among young people ages 15 to 24," according to the CDC 2006 Surveillance Report.

Some might credit people not getting tested to simply a lack of information, and others might blame apathy.

But "a lot of people are caught up on not wanting to get tested because of embarrassment," said Kalani Holleman, a UA graduate student.

And we think she probably is right.

Walking into the Pat Walker Health Center for some STD testing might be a little awkward, but that the PWHC offers such an important and relatively cheap and convenient service to UA students is fortunate.

Furthermore, no one else in the world - besides PWHC officials and the person being tested - has to know anything.

Dottie Pope, a nurse practitioner at the PWHC, said she sees UA students getting tested for STDs almost every single week.

While it's unfortunate STDs aren't rare, it's a little comforting to know PWHC staff members are accustomed to working with students getting tested.

Whether they want to know or would rather be ignorant of their potential conditions, those who are sexually active have, at the very least, taken on the responsibility of informing their partners of whether they're infected with an STD.

While at the UA, these students must take advantage of the STD testing services offered; the benefits of knowledge certainly outweigh the possibility of any embarrassment.