Yahoo Lifestyle Syphilis rates at all-time high in Australia
Syphilis rates are at an all-time high in Australia. Photography istockphoto
Thought syphilis was ancient history? Nope, and diagnosis has hit an all-time high.
Research from UNSW's Kirby Institute for Infection and Immunity in Society shows that more Australians were diagnosed with syphilis in 2013 than ever before.
They found sexually transmitted diseases across the board are on the rise and more than 1760 syphilis notifications were recorded, a 34 per cent increase since 2009.
Courtesy Kirby Institute, this graph shows the spike in syphilis rates in Australia
Syphilis was almost non-existent in the 1990s and awareness around the veneral disease has dropped in recent years.
The Kirby Institute head of surveillance and evaluation, David Wilson, said the rate of diagnosis was highest in people aged between 20 and 39 and almost all were gay men, nearly 600 of them in NSW.
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“Most people do consider syphilis to be a rare and isolated disease, not really of relevance today, and even 15 years ago that was true,” Associate Professor Wilson told The Sydney Morning Herald.
The report - HIV, Viral Hepatitis and Sexually Transmittable Infections in Australia - also indicated an increase in notifications of gonorrhoea with 14,947 notifications in 2013 compared with 13,842 in 2012.
Since 2009, there's been a massive 72 per cent increase in notifications of the STI, and the rate of diagnosis in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population was between 13 to 24 times higher than the non-Indigenous population.
The most prevalent sexually transmitted infection was chlamydia, with 82,537 new diagnoses in 2013, and like gonorrhoea, the rate of diagnosis of chlamydia in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population was three times that in the non-Indigenous population in 2009 – 2013.
NSW Health data also released this week indicates that chlamydia and gonorrhoea notifications rose sharply in the first quarter of this year, with 1211 cases of gonorrhoea and 5963 cases of chlamydia.
Worried about an STI? Speak to your local GP or get more information at STI Health
