Don’t Look at STD Total for Chicago, Illinois – It’s Terrifying

I tried to warn you, but now it's too late. I said that the annual total for STD's in Chicago, Illinois was truly frightful, but you looked anyway. The truth is it's healthy (literally) to understand the truth of this huge health problem so hopefully we can learn from it.

The numbers come from the Illinois Department of Health who keep detailed records of sexually-transmitted diseases in the Land of Lincoln. They offer a full county-by-county breakdown which is interesting, but for the sake of brevity, here are the numbers from the last complete year of records (2022) for the Chicagoland area alone - Cook County and the city of Chicago.

You might want to sit down for this.

Cook County, Illinois had 39,536 cases of Chlamydia, 15,920 cases of Gonorrhea, 971 cases of Primary & Secondary Syphilis and 1,991 cases of Early Syphilis in 2022 alone. The Chicago Department of Health reported 27,596 cases of Chlamydia in 2022.

How did the rest of Illinois fare when it comes to STD cases?

The annual report says that Illinois excluding Chicago had 43,968 cases of Chlamydia, 14,060 cases of Gonorrhea,  651 cases of Primary and Secondary Syphilis and 1,035 cases of Early Syphilis.

At least the Illinois Department of Health was kind enough to share some helpful graphics about the problem.

It's obvious that STD's aren't just a problem for Chicago, but the massive population in the Windy City is responsible for the lopsided number of cases there compared to the rest of Illinois.