Portrait of a broken system: public health officials “don’t know why” STIs are spiking in Washington state, and make no mention of encouraging STI testing.
YAKIMA, Wash. — The bad news is, the number of gonorrhea cases in Yakima County has more than doubled in each of the last two years, and is now the highest since the mid-1980s.
The other bad news is, health officials don’t really know why.
“It’s really been going up since 2010. … It’s very concerning because of the magnitude of the increase over what we’ve prevented in the past,” said Dr. Chris Spitters, medical officer for Yakima County. “We’re not going to get it down in three months or six months to what it was; this’ll be a several-year endeavor because the sheep are out of the barn.”
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