Project Development
Syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease, has been around since the early 1500s. Dr. John Iralu, who works at the Gallup Indian Medical Center, says that since the late 1980s, only about two cases a year of syphilis have been seen on the Navajo Reservation. However, in 1999 rates started to rise. In 2001, they realized there was a significant problem revolving around the Navajo Reservation when they started counting up to thirty-four cases that year and in 2002 that figure was repeated. Thirty-four cases a year isn't a huge number, but considering that the total Navajo population is about 250,000, its enough to equal a rate of infection seven times that of the United States as a whole. About a quarter of these cases are in teens ages fifteen to nineteen meaning that one out of every eight adolescents contracts an STD.
Syphilis is also spread from mother to child during pregnancy if the woman has not yet been treated for that disease. In addition, miscarriage may occur in as many as twenty to fifty percent of women acutely infected with syphilis during pregnancy. Between forty to seventy percent of women with active syphilis will give birth to a syphilis-infected infant.
The goal of our project is to develop a program discussing the rapid movement of Syphilis in the Navajo Reservation. The process involves the carriers spreading the disease syphilis throughout the reservation seven times greater than that of the United States. In due process, the disease will spread through the whole reservation and in time wipe out the entire Navajo population.
