Sexually transmitted diseases soar in the Northern Territory

SYPHILIS rates in the NT have spiked amid an outbreak that began in 2014

SYPHILIS rates in the NT have spiked amid an outbreak that began in 2014.

SYPHILIS rates in the NT have spiked amid an outbreak that began in 2014.

The rate of people infected with syphilis was 2.9 times higher in the third quarter of 2017 than the five-year average.

The number of people presenting with syphilis of less than two years jumped to 93 from September to December. In 2014 there was an outbreak of the sexually transmitted disease with reports indicating that it was concentrated in a number of remote Aboriginal communities and men who have sex with men in Darwin.

The Centre for Disease Control December bulletin stated that the recent spike indicated that, “the ongoing outbreak affecting the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population across Northern Australia is not abating”.

The bulletin indicated that in the third quarter, most cases were from the urban Darwin area and Katherine region, followed by Darwin rural and Alice Springs rural.

Cases in which syphilis has been infecting the person for more than two years were 1.7 times the five-year mean.

CDC head of disease surveillance Dr Peter Markey said programs to abate the outbreak had been in place for years.

“We’ve implemented programs and completed community-wide testing that have been in place for years,” he said.

Between July 1 and September 30 the rate of chlamydia jumped from 614 in 2016 to 751 in 2017, with the Darwin region having the highest spike with an increase of 63 cases.

Dr Markey said regardless of increases the NT had extremely high rates of chlamydia and gonorrhoea.

Dr Markey said the resistant strain of gonorrhoea had so far not been found in the Territory but there was a strain in Darwin that had become resistant to traditional methods of treatment. “We keep a close look on the resistance pattern of gonococcal infection in the Northern Territory and we have to tailor our antibiotic in response to the resistance patterns,” he said.

“We don’t have resistant strains.

“There is a low grade of resistance in Darwin.

“And we use a different antibiotic regimen.”