Call For Action On Increasing Incidence Of Venereal Disease

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31161, 10 September 1966, Page 26

Call For Action On Increasing Incidence Of Venereal Disease

New Zealand, unlike other countries, was doing virtually, nothing about venereal disease, said the North Canterbury Hospital Board’s venereologist.

This was in spite of a rising incidence which all authorities agreed would continue unless strenuous attempts were made to check it. “It is apparently not thought important enough to spend money on,” said the doctor.

The doctor said a campaign was urgently needed ip New Zealand because the general ignorance about the subject was profound. “As parents cannot be depended on to give V.D. and sex education to their children for a variety of reasons, and this education, to be of any use, must be given during or before the fourteenth or fifteenth year, the schools are the obvious choice for the task, difficult and controversial though it may be. “Certain facts about the diseases should be known by everyone.” He said instruction to school-leaving classes was too late. It must be started at the latest in the fourth forms. The mode of presentation to children was all-important, and could be successfully dealt with only by carefully chosen personalities with expert knowledge. They must have had medical training. “If sufferers from venereal disease could be regarded with something approaching the tolerance shown towards unmarried mothers —the two being strictly comparable byproducts, after-all—a great deal of mental and physical suffering would be prevented,” said the doctor. “Because of feelings of guilt, V.D. neuroses are common and often severe, and sufferers are still victimised; some lose their jobs, their friends, and in rare cases are cast from their homes if the ’secret’ gets out. “This change of attitude,

from the view of venereal disease as the wages of sin, to seeing it in its rational light as merely another preventable infection, potentially severe and sometimes fatal, which has adapted itself to sexual' transmission, is essential before the problem can be fully discussed and indeed property tackled as a social and medical problem.” He said New Zealand had wisely refrained from legislation which in most countries made cases notifiable by law, with the result that I most sufferers reported freely to V.D. clinics and qualified doctors, and without fear of disclosure. However, doctors were encouraged to notify to the Health Department all contacts who would not voluntarily attend and the department was empowered to order their examination within a given time. He added that this notice was served with full discretion and as mueh privacy as possible by specially-trained social workers. The doctor said that although the obvious symptoms of gonorrhea made a male seek medical attention at an early stage, the disease might already have been passed on, through sexual intercourse, during the incubation period. Females had a 50-50 chance of developing no sign or symptom at all to tell them they had caught the disease. “Herein lies the difficulty in eliminating gonorrhoea,” he said, “as, at any one time,

Treatment Simple

He said the serious aspect of the matter was the extreme youth of the sufferers. Although syphilis was so far rare in New Zealand, gonorrhoea was quite common, especially in the cities. For instance, more than 380 cases were seen at the Christchurch Hospital last year and others were treated by private doctors.

He has produced graphs showing that, of all female cases of gonorrhoea this year, 70 per cent have been girls under the age of 20. In 1955 the proportion was only 12 per cent. Of all male cases of gonorrhea this year, 30 per cent were youths under the age of 20, compared with 10 per cent in 1955.

Education Needed

“In no other county from which figures are available is the percentage of teen-agers so high,” said the doctor. “An infected promiscuous person in this group is, because of immaturity, potentially a far greater spreader of infection than his or her older counterpart, as can be seen by reading the police court news.” He called for an urgent programme to control the spread of V.D., through pamphlets and posters, special films for selected groups, television and newspaper pulicity, and expanded sex instruction in schools combined with a sound programme of V.D. education.

He said that so far the only propaganda material available in the country was a completely inadequate number of pamphlets of indifferent quality. The schools programme was making very slow progress because of parental opposition, real or imagined, and was lacking in uniformity and in some cases quality. “A large number of secondary schools (including most private schools) are still prejudiced against any such programme, and will have none of it” he said. “The mass media have not been officially used at all. The young people who bear the bnmt of these diseases are for the most part completely ignorant about them, knowing little more than the letters V.D., and are eager to be told the facts.”

there is a reservoir of infected females constantly being added to, who are completely unaware of their predicament and who will infect any sexual partners they may accompany.

“It is only by rigorously insisting on examination of every female contact of a male case that these unfortunates can be brought to treatment.” He said treatment was simple •and effective.

He said syphilis was far more sinister, but so far in New Zealand it was rare. ‘However, with cases increasing almost everywhere else in the world, the stage is set for outbreaks here.”

He said the most powerful weapon for combating that potentially terrible disease was the tracing of contacts of both sexes. Treatment of syphilis was also relatively short and simple. “It must be remembered,” said the doctor, “that venereal disease respects neither cleanliness nor class, and the chances of contracting it are directly proportional to the risks taken and to the degree of promiscuity and indiscriminacy of the sexual partner chosen.

“The only sure preventive is total abstinence; however, all should know that a condom or sheath, properly used, is highly effective against the transmission of gonorrhoea but less so against syphilis. The simple use of soap and water will prevent many cases of venereal disease.”