Southern Nevada Health District

Dakota Williams

I chose to investigate the health trends of diseases in Southern Nevada, where I am from. I spoke with Tami Bruno a disease investigator in the office of epidemiology. She mentioned 5 diseases that have had in increase in the number of cases over time.

Gonorrhea: Sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise in southern Nevada. Tami talked about gonorrhea specifically. It is especially a growing number in the teens of southern Nevada. The infection is spread easily by having multiple partners. It can take a few days for symptoms to appear and so many people don’t seek treatment immediately. Over the past three years there has been a steady increase in the number of people diagnosed with the infection.

Syphilis: This is one of the other STD’s that is on the rise. During the months of October this year there was double the amount of cases of syphilis than there was two months earlier in August. Although it is not the most common disease it is the one with the highest increase over that time period.

AIDS: The number of cases per 100,000 people has hovered around 1 person for the past few months. Southern Nevada contains a few million people though. So it is still a concern for the health district. They are trying to raise awareness for testing for AIDS. It is quite common to see advertisements that encourage people to get tested.

Pertussis: Tami specifically brought up the whooping cough and said it is one of the biggest problems in southern Nevada right now. She said it could be attributed partially to the gaming industry and that environment. Tourists from all over come to one place in Las Vegas. It is a high density of people in one place and it is easy for employees to become infected. Again, it isn’t the most common disease but it is on the rise.

Coccidioidomycosis: This is a fungal infection that is common in desert areas so southern Nevada is the perfect place to find it. Tami said that this infection has increased slowly but steadily over the past few months. She gave me numbers and comparisons for the past couple of months for all these infectious diseases. Although some of them are not too big of problems, she brought them up because each one is increasing in the number of cases seen in the area.