MANHATTAN — Sexually transmitted disease diagnosis rates have risen among Greenwich Village women in recent years, according to analysis of the latest available city Health Department data.
Gonorrhea diagnoses among Village women climbed 57 percent from 2008 to 2010, to 21 cases of the infection among women reported in 2010, up from just 13 cases in 2008. That's the equivalent of 44 diagnoses per 100,000 people in 2010, according to city data.
The Village saw the highest spike in the city when it came to diagnoses for women.
The gonorrhea diagnosis rate among men in the Village dropped 4 percent within the same period, to 109 cases of the infection reported among men in 2010, down from 112 cases in 2008.
The Health Department found that chlamydia rates among Greenwich Village women also rose more than 12 percent from 2008 to 2010, from 176 to 205 individual cases.
Chlamydia diagnoses among men in the Village dropped 30 percent, from 481 cases in 2008 to 342 in 2010.
The latest available data also shows that Central Harlem has Manhattan's highest rates of gonorrhea and chlamydia diagnoses among both men and women.
Manhattan-wide, gonorrhea and chlamydia rates climbed sharply for men and less dramatically for women from 2008 to 2010, with a 23 percent jump in reported gonorrhea diagnoses among men.
Health officials and doctors told AM New York, which first reported the figures, that it was difficult to know why the diagnosis rates had risen.
“It’s a great thing that we’re capturing more people,” Dr. David Bell of New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital told the paper. “But the fact remains that people are not well educated about sexually transmitted infections … besides just HIV.”
STD rates are influenced by "differences in the size of the at-risk population in each neighborhood, differences in sexual behaviors by neighborhood and the existing prevalance of STDs in a neighborhood," a Health Department spokeswoman said.
Numbers of HIV diagnoses among Greenwich Village and SoHo women remained steady from 2008 to 2009, the latest year for which data is available.
Two women were diagnosed with HIV in the Village and SoHo in both years, according to data reported to the Health Department. The number of neighborhood women living with HIV or AIDS rose slightly, from 87 to 88 women within that period. The report used the 2000 Census figures, which calculated 83,709 people living in Greenwich Village at that time.
HIV diagnoses among Village men dropped 18 percent from 2008 to 2009, from 56 to 46 diagnoses. The number of men living with HIV or AIDS rose 2 percent, from 2059 to 2095 men.
Nurses who have worked in the West Village since the start of the AIDS epidemic told DNAinfo.com in September that the neighborhood was now a center for people growing older with HIV and AIDS.
The number of reported HIV diagnoses in Manhattan dropped 11 percent from 2008 to 2009, from 71.7 to 63.2 diagnoses per 100,000.
