• State gonorrhea infection rates have been climbing since a low in 2009 of 34 cases per 100,000 people.
• In 2012, the rate was up to 48 cases per 100,000 before jumping to 64 cases per 100,000 in 2013. Last year, the infection rate spiked to 88 cases per 100,000 people.
Source: Washington State Department of Health
The number of gonorrhea cases across the state spiked in 2014, with six counties, including Clark County, experiencing outbreaks of the sexually transmitted disease.
Last year, state health officials recorded 6,136 cases of gonorrhea, compared with 4,395 cases in 2013 — an increase of nearly 40 percent, according to recently released data from the state Department of Health. That follows a 33 percent increase from 2012 to 2013, according to state health officials.
• State gonorrhea infection rates have been climbing since a low in 2009 of 34 cases per 100,000 people.
• In 2012, the rate was up to 48 cases per 100,000 before jumping to 64 cases per 100,000 in 2013. Last year, the infection rate spiked to 88 cases per 100,000 people.
Source: Washington State Department of Health
Infection numbers jumped last year in Clark County, too.
Local health officials recorded 208 cases of gonorrhea in 2014 — a 41 percent increase from the 148 cases in 2013. While most counties saw increases, Clark, Kitsap, Snohomish, Yakima, Grant and Spokane counties all experienced outbreaks in 2014, according to the state health department.
Local numbers started increasing during the summer months and peaked late in the year. The majority of local cases (63 percent) were among young adults 20 to 34 years old, and more men than women were infected, according to Clark County Public Health.
Health officials can’t point to a cause for the climbing gonorrhea numbers — beyond people not using condoms — or why men were infected at a higher rate.
“We do know there were more males than females, but we don’t know the reason why,” said Dr. Alan Melnick, Clark County Public Health director and health officer.
Melnick suspects the difference may be due to how and when symptoms present. Men are more likely to notice painful symptoms early on; women may not have symptoms until the infection has spread, Melnick said.
Gonorrhea is a bacterial infection that grows easily in the warm, moist areas of the reproductive tract in women and in the urethra in men and women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The bacteria can also grow in the mouth, throat, eyes and anus, according to the CDC.
Men with gonorrhea may experience a burning sensation when urinating or discharge from the penis. Those symptoms may prompt them to go to the doctor’s office where they can be tested, Melnick said.
Most women, however, don’t experience symptoms, or they have mild symptoms that can be mistaken for a bladder or vaginal infection. But women are at risk for serious complications from gonorrhea, such as pelvic inflammatory disease and, if the infection spreads to the fallopian tubes, possible infertility, Melnick said. Gonorrhea can also cause blindness in babies delivered by women with gonorrhea, he said.
“Gonorrhea has some really nasty complications,” Melnick said.
Last year’s outbreak appears to have subsided, however. This year, numbers have fallen to baseline levels: 33 cases in the first three months, according to public health.
Melnick attributes the decline, at least in part, to the public health response to the outbreak.
As gonorrhea numbers started to rise, Clark County Public Health shifted some of its limited resources from other sexually transmitted disease work to outbreak response, Melnick said.
Gonorrhea is a notifiable condition, which means health care providers are required to report diagnoses to their local health departments. Public health staff interview every person diagnosed with gonorrhea to collect the names of their sexual partners from the previous 60 days.
Health department staff then track down each of those partners. Health officials don’t reveal the name of the person diagnosed, to protect their privacy. Partners are just told they may have been exposed to gonorrhea and are asked to be tested, Melnick said.
During the outbreak, the health department had to devote more resources to making those contacts, either by phone or, when they couldn’t be reached, home visits, Melnick said.
In some cases, health officials give the diagnosed person antibiotics for their partner, just to ensure a potentially infected person is treated before spreading the bacteria to others or reinfecting their partner, Melnick said.
“This is the essence of public health disease control,” Melnick said.
“I’d like to think our efforts calmed this down a bit,” he added.
