Posted on 09/14/2009 12:51:37 PM PDT by Steelfish
New Tool To Fight Syphilis? Wal-Mart Gift Cards
N.C. health officials try financial incentives to halt disease's climbing rates
During times of economic downturn, people are more likely to turn to unhealthy behaviors that contribute to the spread of syphilis, such as trading sex for money, experts say. Here, a 1947 bulletin board shows pictures of girls infected with venereal disease.
By Brian Alexander Sept. 14
It just keeps coming back. For more than 60 years, syphilis was largely on the decline. But in recent years, the venereal disease has been on the rise again — particularly in the post-recession South.
In Forsyth County, N.C., where the number of cases so far in 2009 — 140 — is more than triple all those reported in 2008, health officials have chosen an unlikely weapon to fight against it: Wal-Mart gift cards.
To tamp down the biggest outbreak the state has seen in years, health workers from that county spent a recent weekend canvassing neighborhoods, asking people to get tested for syphilis and HIV in exchange for a $10 card.
About half of the 603 people tested during the campaign were motivated by the Wal-Mart cards, estimated officials at the Forsyth County Department of Public Health. In fact, the program was so successful that the cards ran out. (Wal-Mart had no comment on being used as a popular lure for syphilis testing, says Daniel Morales, the company’s director of communications for the southeast region.)
The tanking economy may be behind some of the rise in syphilis cases, officials say, and the reason that a practical draw like a Wal-Mart card is a valuable incentive.
When people are unemployed and living in poverty, they’re more likely to be desperate enough to engage in behaviors that contribute to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases,...
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Sure beats the 2 “White Bullets” in each “cheek” (all old squids will know what they are)!
Now you tell me!
We’ve expanded sex-ed in the schools, yet Syphilis is spreading more rapidly than ever. That’s easy to solve: more sex-ed, make it more graphic, and start earlier. [See, I can guess the liberal answer without having to listen to them mangle the English language.]
Interesting pic post- Maybe that’s the VD Hall of Shame that needs to go up today.
Syphillis is spreading rapidly because of the homosexual community,
Now THAT is a perfectly “Back Door” thing to say! ;-)!
Oh - you got me started in at that site.
As any regular Wal-Mart shopper knows... those photo’s are not shopped. They are real.
Or Unreal.
(reaching for brain bleach)
Ha ha haaaa!!!!
Keith has VD? Better tell Chrissy Leg-Tingle to get checked also!
I could have gone my whole life without seeing THAT!
That whole site is unreal...
But how do you get the cards to wrap around your...?
The funny thing is, they won’t post pictures of people who work at Walmart. Those are the biggest freaks. I know. Worked there for 9 months.
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