PRELIMINARY SURVEY OF SEXUALLY-TRANSMITTED DISEASE SERVICES IN THE WESTERN PACIFIC REGION

The World Bank has ranked sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) as the second most important disease in the world, yet few systematic studies have collected reliable data from the Western Pacific region on this topic. This paper presents data obtained through a questionnaire on ST D care and prevention circulated by the Western Pacific Region Office of WHO and completed by 31 out of 35 countries and territories. The re sults indicate an increasing awareness of the public health importance of conventional STDs, particularly in relation to transmission of HIV , within the region. There are, however, a number of constraints commo n to many of the lower resource countries. These include weak manageme nt with poor planning, lack of guidance on case management, unavailabi lity of effective drugs and uniformly weak reporting mechanisms. STD s ervices in the public service are, in general, free or low cost, altho ugh patients may be asked to pay for drugs. An unknown but clearly sig nificant proportion of STD care, however, is provided by the private s ector which may include private physicians, private non-physician heal th care workers and, very importantly, pharmacists and medicine seller s Thp respondents reported inappropriate health care seeking behaviour as a major constraint on successful STD control.