“Hey man, when was the last time you were screened?” Never have I heard those words from any of my male friends.
Unlike my female friends, who I have overheard discussing the safety and health of their sex lives, men seem to avoid conversations like that. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent studies on some of the most common sexually transmitted diseases (chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis) show that while female rates for these STDs either remained the same or declined, men’s infection rates increased, especially with syphilis. Men made up 91 percent of all reported primary and secondary syphilis cases reported during the study.
Don’t stick your head in the sand: Get yourself tested!
Though women are at higher risk of contracting STDs due to their anatomy, their infection rates are dropping while men’s are rising. So what is causing the increase in male STD incidence, and what can we do to fix it?
One of the possible issues is that, on average, women see the doctor more often than men. Young people are notorious for not getting their annual checkups with their primary care physicians since they are usually healthy. That, combined with the lack of gender-specific male doctors, really leaves no incentive for men to go to the doctor. Continue reading