into practice
as a result of high incidence of STIs.
It is necessary for national strategies to be implemented now, regardless
of the changes within the health service and the resulting politics,
rather than waiting for the situation to escalate.
Venus’s diseases
Sexually-transmitted infections (STIs) are by no means a new phenomenon
and have probably existed for as long as humans have. Looking back
in history there are many well-known figures who have had a STI
- or, to use the old term a venereal disease (VD), named after Venus,
the goddess of love. For instance, by many accounts, King Henry
VIII was insane when he died because his brain was affected by syphilis
which at the time was untreatable.
In the Victorian era, women who were suspected of having VD were
sent to the workhouse and forced to wear yellow dresses for identification.
In 1864, the government was so worried about the amount of VD among
their armed forces that they passed an Act of Parliament which ruled
that women suspected of spreading VD could be forcibly examined
in front of a magistrate and then detained in a designated hospital
for treatment. It took Josephine Butler, a prominent social reformer
of the day, 20 years of campaigning to get this act repealed in
1886.
In 1917, the government produced regulations that specifically named
the trio of syphilis, chancroid, and gonorrhoea as the ‘venereal
diseases’. They gave local authorities the power to provide
free and confidential services for their diagnosis and treatment.
During World War I, as so often in periods of mass movement, the
government was faced with another major VD problem. In 1917, 23,000
servicemen were hospitalised with VD, for anything up to seven weeks.
It was even reported that men would deliberately expose themselves
to VD in order to avoid the worse fate of being sent to the trenches.
In the UK there was another major outbreak during
and immediately after World War II that was in |
