Of Maids and Herpes
posted in - Health tips, - Offbeat news, - Palmdoc |Someone wrote in The Star demanding that Fomema Screen all maids for herpes
Dr. Vagus (an MMR blogger btw), whom we know doesn’t work for Fomema, kindly provided some educational reasons and his letter also got published in The Star, which I reproduce here
Why screen maids for herpes?
I READ with interest the letter from Swan urging routine screening for herpes in foreign maids prior to employment in Malaysia, “Screen all maids for herpes” (The Star, April 8).
We assume the writer is referring to genital herpes (usually Herpes Simplex virus type 2 though HSV-1 may also be a cause) and not the oral cold sores (usually HSV-1) that is fairly common.
In fact, even the humble chickenpox is a type of herpes virus.
While it is true that herpes has no curative treatment and that an infected person tends to harbour the virus for life, one should recognise that genital herpes is a sexually-transmitted disease.
Therefore, unless one is hiring an Indonesian maid for questionable activities, I cannot say I understand why testing for this should be a requirement since this is not something that is transmitted via usual activities of daily living.
True, as a physician I would advocate prevention of STDs, but an Indonesian maid carries no higher risk of harbouring and transmitting the disease than us Malaysians, certainly when their job description does not involve immoral activities.
Therefore, I fail to see why we should disrespect and humiliate these workers who are already braving so much leaving their home and families to work as maids, as to put them through a test for STDs when it bears no relevance to their work.
And the truth is: genital herpes is not uncommon among Malaysians, and only via abstinence or monogamous sexual relationships, can this be avoided. Even condoms do not offer 100% protection.
This bears even less relevance to HSV-1 because the truth is that most adults have already been exposed (Corey L et al, NEJM 1986) and most are asymptomatic.
Therefore, before we rush in to start a witchhunt for herpes and spend millions of ringgit running all kinds of serological tests for the 2.06 million foreign workers in Malaysia, please ask yourself what risk you hope to reduce by performing these screening tests.
DR VAGUS,
Des Moines, Iowa, USA.
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April 10th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
no screening, no income.
no income, increase unemployment.
April 13th, 2009 at 9:56 am
Shh. Actually I’m secretly hired by Fomema.