Battling high rates of sexually transmitted diseases, Baltimore health officials want authority to send patients home with medication that their partners would use, even though the partners hadn't seen a doctor or been prescribed the drugs.
Baltimore Health Commissioner Joshua M. Sharfstein is seeking legislation in Annapolis for a five-year pilot project.
Acknowledging that the approach is a "little unconventional," he said it would help cut cases of gonorrhea and chlamydia.
Medical personnel in city clinics treat patients for gonorrhea and chlamydia and send them home with a "partner notification card" asking the partner to come in for treatment. But that seldom works. Instead, Sharfstein said, the patient "would have sex with their partner again and get another STD [sexually transmitted disease]. So people would come again and again, with the same STDs. It's very frustrating for a clinician."
Under the proposed law, awaiting a House of Delegates hearing tomorrow, patients would be allowed to take an extra course of the antibiotics directly to their partners without requiring that the partners be seen and evaluated by a clinician.
The practice, known as expedited partner therapy, was endorsed by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year for controlling the spread of chlamydia and gonorrhea, said Matthew Hogben, a CDC health scientist
California and Tennessee have enacted legislation permitting the practice, and up to 10 other states have laws that make it permissible in some form, he said. There is no law specifically prohibiting the practice in Maryland. But Sharfstein said the state's Medical Practice Act makes it "questionable."
He won over the city's Senate delegation in a recent presentation to the group in Annapolis.
"When we first heard about it, we all thought, `What in the world?' But then we heard what he had to say and we thought it was a great idea," said Sen. Nathaniel J. McFadden, a sponsor of the bill.
McFadden said the program will help combat infection among people who remain largely unaware of the risks: "We have a whole new generation of young people who don't realize how serious the problem is."
Baltimore leads the state in the number of gonorrhea and chlamydia cases, state figures show. The number of new chlamydia cases in Baltimore jumped from 5,433 in 2000 to 6,380 in 2005, while new gonorrhea cases dropped from 5,603 in 2000 to 3,489 in 2005, according to state figures.
