One in five in N.Z. with herpes?

Press, 24 January 1984, Page 2

One in five in N.Z. with herpes?

PA Auckland One in five New Zealanders will have genital herpes by the time they are 40, but only half of them will know it, according to an Auckland venereal diseases expert, Dr Fred Willmott. Dr Willmott made the estimate based on American research which showed that as many as 60 per cent of women there had the disease by middle age. “They found this out by doing a special blood test which is not available here. Herpes is very common, but .only 50 per cent of those who have it actually know they’ve got it.” Dr Willmott said that while herpes had not

reached epidemic proportions in New Zealand, it was the fourth most common venereal disease behind non-specific urethritis, gonorrhoea and genital warts.

About 300 people a year attend the Auckland sexually transmitted diseases clinic with herpes, he said. It was possible for people who had herpes without symptoms to pass on the disease to their partner. “It is unusual, but not unheard of, for this to happen. People with asymptomatic herpes shed the virus occasionally and it is at this stage that they can infect others,” Dr Willmott said. Symptomless herpes were harmless for the patient, he

said, and there was nothing they could do to cure it. People with the herpes symptoms of painful and recurrent genital blisters were now being helped by new tablets. A cream of the same drug would be available later this year, he said. Active herpes sores in mothers could cause fatal infections in their newborn babies, he said. The baby could contract the disease when it touched genital blisters, or even cold sores on the mother’s lip.

“People think cold sores on the lip are innocent just because they’re not on the genitals, but they cause a quarter of all herpes infections in newborn babies,” and half of all such infections were fatal.