Sexual Diseases Consultant, Dr Olwen Williams, warns that we must learn from the past and alter our attitudes “in order to change tomorrow’s story.”
In a new documentary tracing the history of sexual diseases in Wales, Dr Olwen, who works at Glan Clwyd and Wrexham Maelor hospitals, looks at the stigma and shame all too prevalent in the attitudes of the Welsh towards sexual diseases.
In the programme Caru’n Troi’n Chwerw, (Love turns sour), Dr Olwen interviews historians and specialists in the field. She concludes that a sense of disgrace and embarrassment, as well as a tendency to blame others, still exists, and that there’s a need to re-educate young people.
“One in every 10 young people in Britain today has chlamydia. There’s talk of an epidemic, and Wales isn’t immune,” she says.
But occasionally over the centuries, an individual takes the step of publicly announcing they have a sexual disease. As we discover, one of those was the poet Ieuan Gethin, an aristocrat who lived in Glamorgan in the Middle Ages.
Chaired bard Meirion McIntyre Huws explains, “Ieuan uses his illness as a subject to entertain. It’s obvious that in this period, these diseases were a part of everyday life, affecting every strata of society.”
© 2008 S4C
O Gymru / Made in Wales