Preventing transmission
Sexually transmitted diseases can be prevented by acting responsibly with regard to sexual behaviour.
That is the chapter's own conclusion, and everything on the previous three pages supports it. The diseases have one main route of transmission, so control of that route is control of the disease.
Why prevention carries so much weight here
- Two of the four cannot be cured at all, so for those prevention is the only measure that exists.
- Symptoms can be absent, mild or temporary — syphilis heals and returns, HIV shows nothing for years — so a person cannot rely on noticing.
- Untreated infections do lasting damage: blindness, lameness, harm to the nervous system, and spread through the whole body.
Seeking treatment
Where infection has occurred, early medical treatment is what decides the outcome. Gonorrhoea and syphilis are curable when treated, and treatment also stops a person passing the infection on. Government STD clinics in Sri Lanka provide testing and treatment free of charge and confidentially.
The point of putting this in a science chapter
This section sits at the end of a chapter about reproduction because it belongs there. The same biology that makes reproduction possible — close contact, the exchange of fluids — is what these organisms use to move between people. Understanding the one explains the other.