EDITOR, The Tribune.

We Bahamians must now come to grips with our rampant sexual promiscuity and its attendant sexual transmitted diseases (STDs), namely HIV, chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis. I was alarmed by the recent statistics on syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhea among Bahamians that were given by Health Minister Dr Duane Sands.

Between 2014-2018, there were a staggering 4,992 cases of chlamydia; 2,616 cases of syphilis and 1,181 cases of gonorrhea. I decided to do some research on the symptoms of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia, and discovered that there are four stages of the syphilis infection.

Syphilis symptoms include sores in the vagina, mouth and anus; swollen glands, weight and hair loss, headache and muscle aches and extreme exhaustion. Concerning chlamydia, symptoms are pain during sex; pain or burning when urinating; lower belly pain; abnormal vaginal discharge; bleeding between menstruation cycles; pus or a watery/milky discharge from the penis; swollen or tender testicles and pain, discharge or bleeding from the penis. The gonorrhea symptoms are eerily similar to the symptoms of chlamydia. In an effort to counter the spread of STD infections, Sands says that the Free National Movement government is now looking at introducing home testing kits for STDs. However, despite valiant efforts by successive governments to eliminate STDs, the Bahamas continues to have the highest prevalence of HIV in the world outside of Sub-Saharan Africa, with a reported one in every 50 Bahamians being infected.

Again, it must be stressed that we Bahamians are a ferociously promiscuous people, like the Arawak Amerindians Christopher Columbus and the Spaniards met in Guanahani and throughout The Bahamas and the Caribbean.

In volume one of their Islanders in the Stream, historians Michael Craton and Dr Gail Saunders said the following regarding the Arawaks’ sexual mores: “Though all Arawaks had rigid incest taboos and class divisions that kept upper-class women from lower-class men, they did not greatly value chastity. Males and females were initiated into sex at puberty, and females were expected to have considerable sexual experience before they were married.

One unfortunate consequence was that venereal disease (syphilis) was endemic – “as the first Spaniards and pretty soon most other Europeans found to their cost.”

Obviously due to the rapacious and murderous exploits of Columbus and the Spaniards, the first Bahamians are now extinct. But judging from the utterly moral debasement of their paganistic civilisation, extinction was inevitable anyway. Romans 1:27-28 reads, “And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their list one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.”

Until Bahamians repent of their sexual promiscuity and start to adhere to the biblical guidelines on sex, this county’s STD rates will continue to soar like they did among the sexually promiscuous Arawaks. The current educational promotions on safe sex; that is, using condoms and other contraceptives, have done precious little to ameliorate the STD epidemic in The Bahamas. The government and healthcare stakeholders must promote the biblical position on sex, which is strict abstinence until marriage.

KEVIN EVANS

Freeport, Grand Bahama,

August 5, 2019..