Every Citizen Should Know The Facts

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 223, 1 October 1943, Page 17

Every Citizen Should Know The Facts

{| Written for "The Listener"

by

DR

H. B.

TURBOTT

Director |

of the Division of School Hygiene, Health Department

ARTIME conditions make the spread of venereal diseases easy. They have increased in our country. The alarming thing about this increase is that it applies to civilians only. There is no increase of these diseases in our fighting services, where cases are rapidlly reported, treated, and kept under control. Citizens must know the facts of these diseases so that civilian incidence may be as low as in the fighting forces. Ignorance and secrecy are highly dangerous. In our country, gonorrhea and syphilis are the main venereal diseases. They are both catching, but are caused by different germs. Any free-and-easy sex behaviour means a risk of infection, and cannot be made safe. Clean living is the only way to escape infection; abstinence in the unmarried is not harmful. Gonorrhea is the more common venereal disease. It is a contagious disease of the sex organs. It is extremely rarely ever spread except through sexual intercourse with an already infected person. It causes inflammation that may interfere with the reproductive organ and cause sterility, or it may affect joints, causing arthritis, or bring on chronic ill-health. "A Killing Disease" Syphilis is a dangerous, crippling, killing disease. The most common way of catching syphilis is through sex relations with a person who has the disease. Syphilis is sometimes- very rarely —

caught by kissing a person who has it, or, extremely rarely, through intimate contact with objects which have already been infested with live syphilis germs. An infected mother may give syphilis to her unborn child, unless skilled treatment is given early in pregnancy. If syphilis is not treated early and thoroughly by a doctor, it is liable to damage the heart, blood vessels, brain, nerves, liver, bones, eyes, or any part of the body. It is one of the causes of blindness, deafness, paralysis, and mental defects. Let me repeat: syphilis and gonorrhea are almost always contacted through intercourse with an infected person. In practice there is little need to fear their spread by accidental infection. It Can Be Cured Venereal diseases can be cured by proper treatment, especially in the eariy stages. Advice, diagnosis and treatmentconfidential and free-are available at public hospital clinics. A clinic, or a. doctor used to treating venereal diseases, should be visited at once if there

is the slightest reason to suspect infection. These are the signs: the first sign of syphilis is a small ulcer on or near the sex organs. It appears from 10 to 90° days after infection; usually about three weeks. Gonorrhoea first shows itself as a discharge from the sex organs, appearing usually from two to 10 days after infection. , A Duty to the Country Contiol of venereal diseases depends upon patients and their infected contacts reporting for early treatment. In civilian life the diseases are not notifiable unless a patient ceases treatment. It is left to the citizen who has contracted infection firstly to place himself under medical treatment, and secondly, to advise the authorities where the infection was caught, so that contacts may be treated and cured also. Early treatment will keep these diseases. down. A systematic and sustained effort is required to combat the spread of these two disabling diseases. If the civilian incidence could be controlled, even to the same extent as it is in the Armed Forces, then something really worthwhile would be accomplished. This is_ where the civilian, especially the un--married person, has a personal responsibility and a duty to the rest of the. community.