Report on venereal diseases / Medical Advisory Committee (Scotland).

Date:
1944
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on venereal diseases / Medical Advisory Committee (Scotland). Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The responsibility for promoting education and publicity. 36. The Department of Health for Scotland should be primarily responsible for the promotion of national propaganda. They may find it helpful to utilise the services of interested voluntary bodies, but the primary responsibility should not be delegated. Medical Officers of Health have an important part to play in adapting the national campaign to the particular circumstances of their areas, in securing the co-operation of the medical profession and in co- ordinating local effort. As the problem of venereal diseases is as much moral as medical, the Church should be pressed to attack the moral side of the question fearlessly in straightforward, outspoken teaching. With a defined national policy embracing a guided programme of local effort we see no reason to doubt that success will follow. We take the opportunity of emphasising that the Government Departments concerned, especially the Department of Health for Scotland, should take an active part not only in directing schemes for the instruction of the public but also in seeing that these are effectively carried out. MEDICAL ORGANISATION 37. Once we had taken the measure of the incidence of venereal diseases we examined in detail the facilities available for prevention, diagnosis and treat- ment in order to assess whether they were sufficient in extent and efficient in their operation. In accordance with the Public Health (Venereal Diseases) - Regulations (Scotland) 1916, statutory facilities are provided by County Councils and the Town Councils of large burghs, singly or in combination, under schemes approved by the Department of Health for Scotland, which include the pro- vision of (a) laboratory examinations, (b) free treatment, (c) the supply of drugs for treatment and prevention, (d) specialist assistance, and (e) educational propaganda. We have already commented upon the educational problem and Laboratory Facilities. 38. At the outbreak of war the organisation of laboratory facilities for the venereal diseases service became associated with the Emergency Bacteriological Service, each clinic being related to a designated laboratory. Four local authorities have their own laboratory services and other areas have arrangements with the laboratories of medical schools and certain of the larger voluntary hospitals. It has been suggested to us that facilities for serological tests are not sufficient to give timeous results ; we have been told, for example, how seamen have had to wait from a Thursday until the following Tuesday before the laboratory report came to hand, in consequence of which ships have been held up. 39. Laboratory investigations, often of a very complex nature, play aZmost essential part in the diagnosis and treatment of venereal diseases, the carrying out and interpretation of which demand highly skilled and experienced personnel. We recommend that the venereal diseases service be closely correlated with an extended regional laboratory scheme, designed to utilise not only existing laboratories but those set up in connection with the Emergency Medical Service. 40. As a sound insurance for the establishment of healthy families we recommend more widespread serological testing of pregnant women and we feel that the medical profession are not sufficiently alive to the value of blood tests in the course of detailed clinical investigation. Such routine tests should not be associated in the public mind with venereal diseases but as an integral —
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