Source: Bloomberg
By Simeon Bennett and Jason Gale
Nov. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Elaine Jones, a 52-year-old soccer mom, surfs the Web to find guys.
Jones isn't looking for partners. She's using the Internet to deliver safe-sex messages and fight a resurgence of syphilis. Cases are rising among gay and bisexual men as new drugs reduce the threat of AIDS, and doctors warn the syphilis outbreak may spread to the wider community.
The popularity of online dating has opened up a new battleground for health workers, who say giving away condoms and hanging posters in clubs aren't enough to stem the sexually transmitted disease, which has reached decade-high levels in cities from London to Melbourne.
"If you have a whole generation who were raised chatting on the Internet, why not try to work with that?" said Jones, an outreach nurse with the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control in Vancouver whose online symbol is a penis wearing a nurse's cap. "The anonymity helps people ask questions they would feel uncomfortable asking in person."
Syphilis, the dementia-causing disease blamed for killing gangster Al Capone, painter Paul Gauguin and composer Franz Schubert, was considered dormant 10 years ago. Infectious cases were diagnosed in 2,766 people in the U.K. last year, up from 137 a decade earlier. In the U.S., cases rose 12 percent to 9,756 in 2006, the sixth straight annual increase, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Sydney, home to one in five Australians, declared October syphilis month as part of a drive to get men tested and treated.
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