Sexually transmitted diseases: microbiology and management.

As we enter a new millennium, age-old problems of infectious diseases continue to plague us. Very few have been eliminated; many – e.g., tuberculosis – are increasing even faster than the terrifying increase of human populations. Such diseases are often inflated by that very increase – through overcrowding, poverty and environmental degradation. The end of the last millennium has also seen an unprecedented maelstrom of new or emergent diseases. Many of these, too, may have arisen in the context of modern social trends. Perhaps the most nightmarish is HIV disease. Unknown before the last two decades of the twentieth century, this currently incurable virus already infects .50% of the ordinary young adult population in parts of subSaharan Africa and is spreading rapidly, especially in the poorer and more socially unstable parts of the world.