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S.F. Safe-Sex Campaign Goes Out on the Town Health workers offer STD screening Yumi Wilson, Chronicle Staff Writer |
Saturday, April 15, 2000
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San Francisco -- Most people go to clubs for a little dancing, partying and mingling. So why not add a little testing for sexually transmitted diseases to the scene? San Francisco's Department of Public Health is starting an unusual safe-sex campaign that asks hip young club-goers to go to the bathroom and urinate in a cup. The results would be used in a relatively new and simple test for chlamydia and gonorrhea, diseases most people do not even know they have -- at least in the early stages. The goal, said health department spokeswoman Eileen Shields, is to get more people in their teens and 20s tested for two diseases that are spreading among the young. If left untreated, both diseases can lead to sterility, especially among women. Starting tonight, a team of five health workers -- joined by a youthful hip-hop crew from radio station KMEL -- will go to the Cat Club at 1190 Folsom St. to offer free condoms and pamphlets about safe sex. The group will then return to the same club, which features salsa and hip-hop music on Saturday nights, for two more weeks. By the third and final week of the campaign, staff members hope to have earned the trust and good will of club owner Tony Carracci to set up a testing lab in the bathrooms. ``We have these brand-new tests -- all you have to do is pee in a cup, and women and men don't have to endure the painful examinations,'' said Jacqueline McCright, director of the health department's community programs for sexually transmitted diseases. ``That will make it more likely for young people to get tested.'' Carracci, who did not know about the campaign until a reporter called, initially expressed skepticism. But after being told more about the program, he said he is open to the idea. ``I don't tend to care for surprises . . . but yeah, I suppose,'' he said. ``How are they going to do this? I don't have any doors on the boys bathroom. I guess they could use the girls bathroom. I suppose we can try it and see how it goes.'' David Louie, a 25-year-old KMEL account executive working with the health department on the campaign, said he had suggested the Cat Club because it's popular with his peers. ``And our deejay Mind in Motion performs there, so we thought it would be a good place to start,'' he said. Glorious Wise, a 24-year-old regular at the Cat Club who also works at KMEL, admits that she does not know much about the two diseases and thinks the safe-sex campaign is a ``very good idea.'' But she is not so sure about being tested at a club. ``I don't think a club atmosphere is appropriate, because the club scene is so impersonal,'' Wise said. ``I assume if something wasn't right, I would just go to the clinic or a doctor.'' The problem is that only 30 percent of the people with chlamydia or gonorrhea go to the city's sexually transmitted diseases clinic, Shields said. That is why city health workers have been trying to reach out to people at street fairs, athletic tournaments and other events. Until 1995, the tests for these two diseases were much more invasive and painful, Shields said. For example, a doctor would have to insert a swab into a man's penis to test for chlamydia. The new test is painless, she said, requiring only a urine sample. Results are known in about a week, and treatment can be as easy as one dose of azithromycin, an antibiotic. Since the new test was developed, the city has offered free testing to select groups, but never to the mainstream crowd at clubs. Now that the number of young people, both men and women, contracting gonorrhea and chlamydia is on the rise, city health officials say it is time to hit the clubs. The last time the city took safe- sex advice to the clubs was in 1988, in the midst of the AIDS epidemic. ``Now, it's time to do it again, because the rates of chlamydia are increasing, especially among younger people, ages 15 to 25,'' McCright said. Among people of all ages in San Francisco, the rate of chlamydia infection is about 371 per 100,000, and the rate of gonorrhea is about 219 per 100,000. But for people age 21 and under, the rate for chlamydia is 2,057 per 100,000, and gonorrhea is 580 per 100,000. ``Now that we have this test,'' McCright said, ``there's no reason for people to walk around with it and not know it.''
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