One in four college students have a sexually transmitted infection and 19 million new STIs are reported each year, with close to half appearing among 15- to 24-year-olds, according to EliteDaily.com.
The International Journal of STD & AIDS said:
• Seventy-four percent of males and nearly 88 percent of females reported never or rarely worrying about STIs or HIV, even though they are at risk.
• Twenty-six percent of males and nearly 36 percent of females failed to use a condom during sex with someone they met on spring break.
• Nearly 50 percent of the males and 41 percent of the females reported consuming alcohol prior to sex.
Snow Health Center, provided by the Wellness Center at Eastern Michigan University, offers HIV counseling and testing services to students at their clinic on Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in room 330.
The center, which offers male and female staff trained by the Michigan Department of Community Health, uses an oral swab test method that has a 95 percent accuracy rate if it’s been thirty days since the patient was sexually active.
The swab does not involve needles and is similar to taking one’s temperature with a thermometer. Testing is free, anonymous and walks-ins are accepted. Patients can expect their test results within a week, but according to Michigan law they must pick them up within 30 days from the test date or the clinic can’t release the results.
The Wellness Center’s Program Coordinator Eric Ward said he feels the free testing is underused by students.
“We’re always out looking to bring more people in,” he said. “We want to make sure we balance that you don’t have to wait … for two hours to get tested and things like that, but also that you get the time to ask questions.”
Ward said the clinic usually sees fluctuations in the number of people getting tested depending on the time of the year such as just after spring break for example.
Two additional testing sites in the Ypsilanti area are the HIV/AIDS Resource Center, located at 3075 Clark Road in Suite 203, and the Washtenaw County Health Department, at 555 Towner St., for those not comfortable with testing on campus.
