Papua New Guinea

Traditional sexual mores vary greatly from one area to another, but promiscuity, and prostitution in particular, of the type encountered in Western Society, is rare in New Guinea culture (BurtonBradley, 1972). While in some traditional groups premarital sexual experience is common, disapproval of promiscuity of married women is virtually universal, although Malinowski (1932) has described how a Trobriand Chief married young women and prostituted them. Contact with Western civilization has modified these traditional restrictions, most noticeably in urban areas, and diverse new patterns of sexual behaviour have emerged. Venereal disease was probably introduced to New Guinea, either directly or indirectly, by Europeans (Maddocks, 1967a). Whereas it is likely that early European sailors or explorers introduced gonorrhoea, the coloured followers of these Europeans were probably responsible for the introduction ofDonovanosis. The Australian aborigines and inhabitants of some islands between Australia and New Guinea, themselves heavily infected with this latter disease, possibly transmitted it to their Papuan neighbours. It was noted that labourers returning from the Queensland canefields were infected (British New Guinea Report, 1900). Following its introduction, the transmission of venereal infection was facilitated by ritual promiscuity associated with certain ceremonies and by the greater ease of communication introduced by European control. Some children, and possibly some adults, were probably infected with Donovanosis by direct body contact with their parents or relatives (Zigas, 1971). Gonorrhoea, which is almost certainly the most common venereal infection, occurs throughout Papua New Guinea. In New Ireland depopulation by 27-1 per cent. between 1930 and 1951 has been attributed to this disease (Gunther, 1972). Donovanosis, while generally rarer than gonorrhoea, is very