Venereal Disease Imported by Mariners.

Over the years several investigations have been made into the nationality of patients attending the venereal diseases clinics of Great Britain by the British Cooperative Clinical Group (1956, 1963a, b). The results of these surveys are of special interest in inland areas where promiscuity is found especially in migrant immigrants, but at seaports peripatetic native and foreign mariners are equally promiscuous (Schofield, 1964). Much of the venereal disease seen at seaports is imported; Haro and Patiala (1961) reported that 50 per cent. of the cases of gonorrhoea seen in Finnish seamen were acquired abroad. The investigation reported here was planned to estimate the amount of venereal disease imported by mariners into the locality of the VD clinics at South Shields and Tynemouth, to compare the origins of mariners with the source of their infections, to see if there were patterns of behaviour common to infected mariners, and to review methods of limiting the importation of venereal disease into the country through the seaports.