New gonorrhea superbug
Antibiotic resistance has given rise to untreatable strains of gonorrhea and at least three people worldwide have been infected by such gonorrhea “superbugs”, the World Health Organisation said on Friday. Calling the situation “very, very serious”, the WHO has said that it is only a matter of time before even last-resort antibiotics start failing to treat the sexually transmitted disease.
“Gonorrhoea is a very smart bug,” said Teodora Wi, a human reproduction specialist at the Geneva-based U.N. health agency, speaking to news agencies about the imminent health crisis. “Every time you introduce a new type of antibiotic to treat it, this bug develops resistance to it.”
The WHO estimates that 78 million people are infected with gonorrhoea every year. The disease is caused by the bacteria Neisseria gonorrhoeae and can cause pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy and infertility. A gonorrhea infection also increases the risk of getting HIV.
The WHO’s Global Gonococcal Antimicrobial Surveillance Programme, which monitors drug-resistant gonorrhea, found widespread resistance of the bacterium to the antibiotic ciprofloxacin during 2009 to 2014 with 97% of countries that reported data having drug-resistant strains. Eighty one percent of countries reported resistance to azithromycin. The emergence of resistance to what is now used as last-resort treatment – the extended-spectrum cephalosporins…
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