I have been thinking about this recently. I think that in the United States we could achieve near complete eradication of syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia is everyone got tested for it, and treated if they had it. These 3 STDs are easily treated with a simple course of anti-biotics, and even when they are in the advanced phases they still only require a short stay in the hospital. Unlike HIV and genital herpes these 3 are easily diagnosed and cured.
And eradicating these diseases would decrease the incidence of HIV infection, since having another STD increases the risk of contracting HIV. It would also lower mortality among those who are HIV+ because having co-infections in HIV makes the disease progress more rapidly.
Now, I am not a fan of the government requiring people to do medical treatments, but this is one idea I think the government should pick up. The problem with these 3 diseases is that they often have no symptoms until later on in the disease. I know we couldn't eradicate them entirely, because there are always people who travel to the US and there are people who still won't get tested, but I think if the government put out some Public Service Announcements on these 3 that we could come pretty close to eradicating them.
What do you think?
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