If you visit prostitutes, most people would say, you take your chances. And while men who use street-walking prostitutes must be mad to accept the risk of disease, it would be widely held that the risk with prostitutes in a council-approved and legal brothel would be simply a matter of degree. Sure, safe sex reduces the risk but it cannot eliminate it or, even, make it acceptable to most.
While that risk concerns a medical doctor who phoned me recently, his greatest concern is for the the client's wife or other sexual partners and family members.
As I write in my column today, this doctor was horrified to learn that a woman with hepatitis C, and with whom he had had professional contact, is working in a Newcastle brothel. Indications are, he told me, that she is HIV positive as well. Were brothels, he asked me, not required to ensure that their prostitutes were clear of disease?
The short answer is no. The longer answer is that sexual health checks are available to prostitutes (and anyone else) free and that NSW Health and WorkCover recommend - yes, recommend - that brothels monitor the health of their staff.
It is an offence under the Public Health Act for a prostitute who knows she (or he) has a sexually transmissible disease to have sex without declaring that fact, and the same offence applies to the brothel. This law can be interpreted as a case for not knowing about such a disease.
In any event, hepatitis C is not listed as a sexually transmissible disease.
Compulsory and enforced health checks for prostitutes would require the regulation and wider acceptance of an industry many still refuse to countenance, and I believe that both the regulation and the acceptance would be a huge advance. As it is now the sex industry, both legal and illegal, is free to pose as great a risk to public health as it chooses. What do you say?
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