She said she expects the numbers to drop soon.

“There’s been a big push in the St. Louis community to test more people. First you’re going to see an increase in the prevalence that you identify, and with effective treatment and getting folks identified we should then see a decrease.”

The group gets an equal number of clients from St. Louis and St. Louis County, she said.

Target clients are 13 to 24 years old who may come in because they are showing symptoms or they are starting new relationships.

Still, Stoner said, the region needs a city-county effort to address the STD numbers. “These (diseases) don’t know boundaries,” Stoner said.

The federal report said STD numbers are dropping or flattening across the nation. The same issues in battling STDs remain the same, the CDC says: education and access to medical care.

Despite the rankings, the number of local cases in 2013 were fewer than in 2012, which had 9,000 new chlamydia cases and nearly 4,000 new gonorrhea cases.

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