05/12/2024
Digital One, a community radio station in North Somerset, says that local and national leaders in sexual health have warned that, as part of general trends towards bacteria becoming resistant to treatment, so gonorrhoea has become harder to treat in recent years. The latest figures for England show there were 85,223 cases of gonorrhoea diagnosed in 2023.
As well as a rise in cases of the STI, health officials have also found an increase in treatment-resistant gonorrhoea. While the infection is usually easy to treat, some strains are resistant to commonly used antibiotics and are harder to treat. The first-line treatment in England is an antibiotic called ceftriaxone, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said. Dr Helen Fifer, consultant microbiologist at UKHSA, said: “Gonorrhoea is becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics, risking the possibility of it becoming untreatable in the future. “Untreated gonorrhoea can lead to serious health issues, including pelvic inflammatory disease and infertility. “Condoms are the best defence, but if you didn’t use one with a recent new or casual partner, get tested to detect the infection and prevent onwards transmission.” Professor Matt Phillips, president of the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV (BASHH), added: “The rise of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhoea infections in England is a worrying trend that must be addressed with immediate action. “Antibiotic resistance of STIs poses an increasingly major public health threat, which can create physical and psychological harms and place additional demands on other parts of the NHS".
