So now we know why the government is trying to get our health records on the new ID cards. Sexually transmitted diseases (STIs) are on the rampage and, besides the fact that this does not project the kind of image the government wishes to show of sunny Malta, the problem cannot be ignored any longer.
“Come to sexy Malta and clap your time away”, could be our new slogan.
According to World Health Organisation estimates, there was a potential of 13,000 new cases of STIs per year in Malta. “However, we only saw some 2,000 patients last year, so, obviously, the vast bulk is out there in the community”, Dr Philip Carabot, Genitourinary Unit (GU) chairman, told The Sunday Times last week.
The majority might not have gone to the GU clinic, but I presume most of them visited their GPs, which means that the medical profession as a whole is well aware of what the situation is.
People, especially men and the young, are blasé about the aftermath of being promiscuous and not using condoms. Dr Carabot was commenting on the report released by the GU clinic on Malta’s sexual habits, which revealed that the number of people infected with gonorrhoea through casual, unprotected sex has more than doubled in one year.
Malta is facing “the worrying trend of rampant, casual sex” and “young people lack the most fundamental social and sexual skills, including basic genital hygiene,” Dr Carabot said last Sunday.
There were 61 cases of gonorrhoea mostly affecting males (83.6 per cent), and young people aged 20-34 (73.7 per cent), while there were 18 cases of syphilis, an STI that is being increasingly diagnosed in pregnant women, last year, according to the report.
The sex is not only unbridled, but also unprotected leading to an increase in most of the sexually transmitted infections.
Surprise, surprise by Thursday Health Director General Ray Busuttil told The Times that the National Sexual Health Policy (NSHP) should be finalised in the coming weeks after seven years in gestation.
How can Dr Busuttil come out with “seven years in gestation”, and not blush. So it takes seven years for the policy to gestate and suddenly it comes to a head and is ready to be finalised in a couple of days, just after an embarrassing report is published.
Besides the sexual connotation, how can it take seven years to come up with a National Sexual Health Policy? And then not even have a strategy!
Once published, the policy will provide the framework and overall direction of where Malta should be going on sexual health but not the strategy, we were told.
Remember my warning about Big Brother last week? This is what Dr Busuttil told The Times about the NSHP, despite not having a strategy, “We are exploring the best methods to instigate change. In other sectors, such as smoking, we created the environment by banning smoking in public places to try and stop people smoking.
“However, sexual behaviour is much more difficult because it’s something very personal. But we are working on it.”
Well we are all very interested in what Dr Busuttils’s ideas on banning sex are, especially since he has no strategy.
The need for sex will never go away, you cannot stop people from having sex no matter how much a hypocritical society pretends it might, unless people are turned into Zombies.
One does not need a medical degree to know that hormones are part of the make up of a human being. Unless we are thinking of gene engineering, to alter sexual appetites and needs, comparing smoking to sex is ludicrous.
And Dr Bussutil is confused on more than just sex and smoking.
“It could be that people are becoming more promiscuous and not taking the necessary protection or they’re being more vigilant and we are identifying more of them,” he told the Sunday Times. So which is it? They are certainly not being more vigilant, according to the report the former is being established.
Why has the government, the health authorities and our doctors in general, not to mention the Church, followed by our educators, the media and the rest of us that get more excited about the Eurovision song contest, been ignoring the serious issues related to sex.
We do get the occasional article or programme skimming the surface, but we move on sharpish with no real reflection or serious debate.
So first we bury our heads in the sand and ignore humans’ sexual appetites and needs and then we suddenly panic because the health service is going to have to cope with a lot of sick people who are still ‘happily’ (please leave single quotes) transmitting sexually transmitted diseases.
Now rampant, casual sex is fairly universal, where we differ is the nonchalant behaviour at the risks involved in such activity.
Is it just Dr Carabot who has been pushing for this issue to be given the urgency it deserves? And why has it taken the health authorities so long (seven years gestation) to provide the framework and overall direction of where Malta should be going on sexual health and with no strategy.
Dr Carabot said he has emphasised the urgent need for a National Sexual Health Policy, based on the realities of Maltese society today, for a while but it fell on deaf ears.
He is sceptical about “The ‘revised’ document drawn up seven years ago” and thinks, “The policy should be drawn up by experts, unfettered by institutional agendas. The policy should be shelved and re-written,” he said.
Even Dr Busuttil referred to the document as having been “unanimously rejected by the Sexually Transmitted Infection Prevention Committee as being too weak”. The STIPC’s term of office expired at the end of 2007, and has not been reappointed.
Yet, this is the document, presumably doctored after having lain dormant for six months after rejection, is what is being proposed as our National Sexual Health Policy.

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