Board Votes $1.5 Million to Fight Syphilis Outbreak

Responding to an outbreak of 52 syphilis cases among predominantly gay men with multiple sexual partners, the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors approved a $1.5-million emergency campaign Tuesday to combat the disease and promote safe sex.

Health advocates fear that the syphilis outbreak signifies increasingly risky sexual behavior on the part of those who have contracted it, which could increase the spread of AIDS. Some advocates criticized the county for not moving quickly enough to stem the behavior.

“If we don’t do something fast we’ll have a really big mess,” said Kathy Watt of the Van Ness Recovery House. “It’ll make the ‘80s look like nothing really happened.”

As part of its plan, the county health department will distribute 500,000 condoms to clinics and community groups in the areas with the highest risk and will launch an ad campaign. It will also urge bathhouses and sex clubs--frequented by many of the infected men--to distribute condoms to clients and screen them for sexually transmitted diseases.

Finally, the health department proposes encouraging greater tracking of the illness by physicians and monitoring for it in county jails.

“There’s no one single approach that’s going to work,” said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, the county’s director of public health.

The outbreak surfaced two weeks ago when the county reported 23 men infected with syphilis. That number rose to 51 by Friday and an additional case was found this weekend.

The number of cases is striking because last year, none of the 120 syphilis cases reported in the county involved gay men.

The recent cases involve men from West Hollywood, Hollywood, Silver Lake and Long Beach, officials said. About 60% of the men have the virus that causes AIDS, which officials say is cause for additional alarm.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, whose Westside district has been the site of much of the outbreak, reminded Fielding that the county has the power to order sex clubs and bathhouses to provide condoms to patrons, and even to close the establishments if necessary.

“I don’t know anyone here who wants to shut them down,” Yaroslavsky said, “but . . . if they don’t cooperate to try to curtail the spread of [sexually transmitted diseases] in their establishments, at some point there’s going to be no choice.”

Fielding said the bathhouses and sex clubs had been highly cooperative and said the county wanted to work with them and ensure they voluntarily distributed condoms before taking legal action that could be tangled up in the courts.

Yaroslavsky also urged that the $250,000-to-$350,000 media campaign, which is planned to run for two to three months, be “aggressive” and grab the public’s attention.

Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke urged the health department not to overlook other parts of the city in its campaigns. “My experience is, a crisis in one community today is a crisis everywhere tomorrow,” she said.

Fielding said that one problem that the outbreak has revealed is that the condoms the county has been distributing are going unused because, although they meet federal standards, there is a local perception that they are faulty and may break. The county will be spending $50,000 to buy a new brand of condoms.

The department also proposes screening women inmates in the county jails, along with inmates placed in the “gay sections” of the facilities, because syphilis was detected among women inmates in jails last year.