The sexually transmitted disease chlamydia is rampant among young Australians, with an expert estimating close to half a million new infections in 2012.
"It's skyrocketing," says Associate Professor David Wilson, who on Monday will present the latest statistics at an Australasian sexual health conference in Darwin.
The conference follows an AIDS event, which will hear about a record 1253 new HIV diagnoses in the year.
There were 82,000 chlamydia diagnoses reported. But Prof Wilson believes this could be as little as one-sixth of the real number, with hundreds of thousands of cases undiagnosed.
He should know. As a program head of surveillance at the Kirby Institute for Infection and Immunity in Society, he is responsible for compiling national statistics for sexually transmitted diseases.
Part of the problem with chlamydia is it seldom has symptoms and people don't take it seriously.
But it can cause serious complications, including pelvic inflammatory disease, which can lead to chronic pain and infertility.
The infection can be cured with a single dose of antibiotics. But re-infection takes place unless both partners are treated.
Prof Wilson says it is important that anyone who tests positive is open and honest with present and past sexual partners.
He says all sexually active young people should have themselves tested for chlamydia and gonorrhoea once a year and at the start of any new relationship.
Urban gay men and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people are at particular risk of gonorrhoea, which is at its highest level in 10 years.
Another disease on Prof Wilson's radar is viral hepatitis, with 6702 new cases of the B strain in 2012 and 10,114 of the C strain.
Although there is an effective treatment, it is heavy going for patients and Prof Wilson says people are becoming critically ill and dying because they are waiting for an improved method they know is on the way.
The good news, he says, is a dramatic fall in genital warts cases since 2007, when the HPV vaccine for cervical cancer was introduced for schoolgirls.
"Since the program started the infection rate among girls has dropped from 12 per cent to around 1.5 per cent and the prevalence among boys has also fallen."
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