This is a blog for the Mental Health Policy Class at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work.

April 8, 2008

One in 4 Teen Girls Has a Sexually Transmitted Disease

More than 3 million teenaged girls have at least one sexually transmitted disease (STD), a new government study suggests. The most severely affected are African-American teens. In fact, 48 percent of African-American teenaged girls have an STD, compared with 20 percent of white teenaged girls. "What we found is alarming," Dr. Sara Forhan, from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a teleconference Tuesday. "One in four female adolescents in the U.S. has at least one of the four most common STDs that affects women." "These numbers translate into 3.2 million young women nationwide who are infected with an STD," Forhan said. "This means that far too many young women are at risk of the serious health effects of untreated STDs, including infertility and cervical cancer."

No comments: