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Sexually Transmitted Diseases: Yes We Are Affected By It

© Larshal Veronica Vance

I was riding on the train and the batteries in my walkman ran out so I overheard a conversation by two teenager girls. I was amused because I can remember when I was 14 and having conversations like theirs. I was preparing to get off when I heard one of the girls say something like, “please, crabs are a white girls disease.” Her statement made me think about how many people may be thinking the same way.

As African Americans we have a history with sexually transmitted diseases. One of the most tragic periods of our history has to do with a sexually transmitted disease called syphilis. The Tuskegee Study, which happened in the 1930’s, had 600 men involved in a study where they thought they were getting treatment for the syphilis but in reality it was a non-treatment study. The study was so bad that the former President Clinton apologized to the survivors of the study, their family and heirs on May 16, 1997. (Reverby, 1998)

Today, in the 21 century the African American community is now faced with the problem of AIDS. The statistics show that:

 In 1998, AIDS was the leading cause of death for blacks ages 25-44.

 Black women accounted for about 64 percent of AIDS cases

 Black children under the age 13 represent almost two-third of all reported pediatric AIDS cases in the United States

The AIDS epidemic is so bad that in Alameda County, California because of the amount of African Americans with AIDS (60 percent of the cases) the county official declared a state of emergency to address the problem. (Whitaker, 2001)

A question that came to my mind is why are STD’s affecting our community in such a deadly way. According to the article “Risky Business” in Ebony, there are different factors:

1. Some minorities don’t believe there is a problem- this goes back to how this article started, some minorities don’t trust the statistics. There is a belief among minorities that the higher incidence of sexually transmitted disease cases among minorities may be related to faulty or slanted statistics. (Hughes, 2000)

2. Social variables- Dr. Helene Gayle believes that the disruption of the family often, leads to multiple sexual partners which can lead to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. (Hughes, 2000)

Those are sad facts when our communities are suffering tragically from sexually transmitted diseases. I have broken the different STD into two categories. The first category are what I call the well know STD’S, which are AIDS/HIV, chlamydia, crabs, genital herpes, gonorrhea and syphilis. The second category is what I call not so well known STD’s which are chancroid, epididymitis, epstein-barr virus, nongonococcal urethritis (NGU), molluscum contagiosum, mononucleosis, pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), scabies and vagintis. I will be going into detail about what those are in the next article because of the amount of information I have to get to.

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