Now that Cheryl “Salt” Wray and Sandy “Pepa” Denton are back on the scene it would be great if they did a remix/remake of their hit “Let’s Talk About Sex”. Sister, we not only need to have some candid conversations about sex and HIV/AIDS we also need to talk about sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Reuters says that according to a report issued by U.S. Centers for Disease Control STDs are growing at an alarming rate.
“Chlamydia and gonorrhea are stable at unacceptably high levels and syphilis is resurgent after almost being eliminated,” said John Douglas, director of the division of sexually transmitted diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
It’s hard to believe that V.D. is staging a comeback like one of our favorite groups. Except instead of screaming in excitement we should be letting out one of those horror movie shrieks. The whole thing has me shaking my head in disbelief . I’m also concerned that our country’s STD rate is among the highest of any developed country and 71% of the new cases of gonorrhea and 50% of chlamydia and syphilis patients are in our community. Yup, although we are only 12% of the population we represent a disproportionately high percentage in these stats. Makes me want to cry because it’s the young sisters, 15 to 19, who are contracting STDs at such ‘ring the alarm’ rates.
What is terrifying about these stats is that they only represent numbers on women who’ve actually visited a doctor or clinic (and the brothers add a whole ‘nother layer to this mess). How many young sisters are walking around out there undiagnosed? Going untreated can impact them personally—possibly causing infertility, ectopic pregnancy and pelvic inflammatory disease—but also plays a part in the spread of these diseases to others in the community. All of this is because of so many are taking part in unprotected sex. And Douglas from the CDC says that black folks have even greater risk since so many brothers are behind bars and those who aren’t often have multiple partners (which many of us know about and condone).
So in short, we’re putting ourselves in danger every time there’s no condom involved in a sexual encounter, we’re in a non-committed relationship (and we know the brother is creeping), we don’t teach our daughters to respect themselves and their bodies and we don’t have regular checkups. We’ve got the power to change these stats so what are we going to do about it?
If you liked this post, we think you might like these too:
