Wyoming health officials say they are seeing a gonorrhea outbreak. They had 61 reported cases earlier this month compared to a total of 31 last year. Half of the cases involve people in their 20’s.
The Director of the state’s communicable disease surveillance program, Courtney Smith, says the problem is that couples are not using condoms.
“Gonorrhea is transmitted through unprotected sexual contact and that includes any type of sexual contact whether it be oral, anal or vaginal. So it means that people either aren’t consistently or correctly using condoms. Or they’ve had the infection, they don’t they’re infected…having unprotected sex and spreading the disease.”
Smith said are symptoms to look for.
“Sometimes they can have discharge or an odor, they can also have pain during urination. And then if gonorrhea is left untreated it can cause severe pelvic inflammatory disease in women and it can also cause infertility in men and women.”
If people think they have symptoms they can go to the website knowwyo.org and get a voucher for free or low cost testing. Smith added that if gonorrhea goes untreated it can lead to serious health problems.
