Venereal Disease

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30768, 4 June 1965, Page 12

Venereal Disease

Sir, —Having been in this country for a mere three months, I could perhaps be excused for expressing surprise at the frequency with which the alarm is given about venereal diseases, in a country with such a small and widely scattered population. No doubt, as your leader suggested on Tuesday, it is a sign of the times we live in. There is, however, contained within your leader, the unfortunate attitude that gonorrhoea, being curable by penicillin, is therefore of minor importance. How long is it going to remain curable by penicillin, especially under New Zealand conditions where penicillin is so freely available? Dress like a countryman and walk into any stock firm and one will find that to obtain millions of units of penicillin, sufficient to “treat” any number of attacks of this disease, one is not even required to sign for it. Really, this and similar drugs should be under medical or veterinary control.— Yours, etc., JIMINY CRICKET. May 13, 1965.

. [The district medical officer of health (Dr. L. F. Jepson) replies: “New Zealand figures for venereal disease, like those for most other countries, are based on attendances at clinics. We welcome the public attention which has been given to this problem, which is at least as much social as medical. The World Health Organisation expert committee on gonococci infections reported in 1963 that there was complete failure throughout the world to control gonorrhoea, in spite of penicillin and all the new anifbiotics, most of which are not freely available to the public. The cause does not lie in the failure of penicillin, but with a girl who. although promiscuous, has ho knowledge of her illness at all.”]