Premarital checkup gives peace of mind to lovebirds
Premarital checkup gives peace of mind to lovebirds
Maria Endah Hulupi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Getting hitched marks one's life cycle, but marriage can provide trouble if both couples fail to have a clean bill of health.
A few days after she got married, Yanti felt discomfort in her private parts. It was itching and she suffered from a sort of burning. She noticed a red spot in the area and yellowish vaginal discharge.
She decided to pay a visit to a dermatologist. The latter told her that she had a fungal infection and prescribed her some medication.
However, a week after the treatment, her infection showed no sign of improvement. She was confused and had a niggling feeling that she might have got the infection from her husband.
Yanti tried to convince herself that it wasn't from him, but she couldn't deceive herself because she spotted him secretly scratching his private parts also on a number of occasions.
"I would try my best to go through the ups and downs together but sharing diseases is not part of it," she said.
A general practitioner from the Metropolitan Medical Center (MMC), Rudy Winarto, said that a premarital health checkup is important to make sure that the couple are in good health before they decide to tie the knot, stressing that it should be regarded as a preventive measure.
"The aim of such a checkup is to make sure that couples know their own health situation so they can plan a healthy family and raise healthy children," he said.
Apart from that, it is also important that a person knows and accepts the health situation of his or her future partner for life before they make such an important decision.
"If a health check revealed a certain health condition that could put a member of the couple in a difficult position, things may be different," said an obstetrician/gynecologist with the Omni Medical Center (OMC), Nining Haniyanti, referring to azoospermia (the absence of spermatozoa in the seminal fluid) or testicular feminization (a genetic defect that can lead to undeveloped testes and sterility in a man).
Such tests can help people make the necessary efforts to prevent the spread of infectious diseases through bodily fluids, like blood, saliva, sweat, sperm, and vaginal and seminal discharges, which commonly occur during sexual intercourse.
Besides sexually transmitted diseases, genetic diseases, like thalassemia, hemophilia, diabetes and mellitus can be properly monitored and infections like toxoplasmosis, rubella, cytomegalovirus and herpes (TORCH), which can cause repeated abortions and affect fetal development, can be treated.
The idea of such a health checkup, however, is not new and local hospitals design health packages for premarital checkups, which include the medical history, physical examination, ECG, chest x-ray, and laboratory tests (for blood test, blood sugar, liver functions, serological test, urine, feces and sperm).
The test takes about two to four hours approximately and the result is available in a few days.
The check can be followed with a recommendation for further consultations with specialists should any health problems be detected.
A consultation session is very important and because personal information is confidential, couples can hear the result together or separately.
"It is advisable for the couple to have a consultation as a thorough examination can be performed and proper treatment can be given," Nining said, while explaining that by doing this, possible secondary infections (or the possibility of contracting the same disease from an untreated partner) could be avoided.
Apart from the above mentioned tests, other experts also suggest the importance of examining mental health to discover possible major mental disorders that could affect the marriage, such as schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychosis among other diseases.
Both doctors said that although premarital health checks were available in various hospitals, only a few couples use the services, mainly because of less public awareness on the importance of health checks and the expense involved.
"The annual number of local couples who have their health checked in this hospital could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and most of these couples' medical checkup costs are covered by the companies where they work," said Rudy.
Nining added that many people, especially the brides-to-be are reluctant to have their health checked because sex-related issues are still considered taboo and many people still have the wrong ideas about premarital checks.
"Many people want to keep it private and they often think that having their body examined is embarrassing. This is why they are unwilling to consult a doctor," she said.