A new strain of Drug Resistant Gonorrhoea has spread across the world setting of the alarm for World Health officials. The strain has been discovered in several countries miles apart, bringing to light the importance of safe sex.
The United Nations health agency has said that unless the doctors catch, and treat the disease early, the patients may run out of treatment options.
Image (trying-to-conceive.com)
According to the World Health Organization “Gonorrhoea is becoming a major public health challenge, due to the high incidence of infections accompanied by dwindling treatment options,” says Dr Manjula Lusti-Narasimhan, from the Department of Reproductive Health and Research at WHO. “The available data only shows the tip of the iceberg. Without adequate surveillance we won’t know the extent of resistance to gonorrhoea and without research into new antimicrobial agents, there could soon be no effective treatment for patients.”
The disease carries with it many health concerns if left untreated including male and female infertility, pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy, severe eye infections in babies, and stillbirths.
According to the CDC the number of new cases is at 700,000 per year in the United States alone. It is one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases in the world and is most prevalent in south and south-east Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
So far the strain of drug resistant Gonorrhoea has been discovered in Japan, United Kingdom, Australia, France, Sweden and Norway. With the likely hood of many cases going undetected in other countries, according to the AP.
“We are very concerned about recent reports of treatment failure from the last effective treatment option – the class of cephalosporin antibiotics – as there are no new therapeutic drugs in development,” says Dr Lusti-Narasimhan. “If gonococcal infections become untreatable, the health implications are significant.”
In many cases of Gonorrhoea there will be no symptoms, making it easy to transmit the disease from person to person, without knowing it. The disease which used to commonly carry with it symptoms that felt like you were “peeing razor blades”, and “green ooze” now has modified, and become more resistant.
The History on Gonnorrhoea:
The disease commonly know as the “Clap” earned its nickname for several reasons. Two reasons include the French name for a brothel, and the method used to treat the disease. This involved having books, and clapping them together, breaking up the crystals built up inside the penis, so that you could once again pee if you had contracted the disease.
This should serve as a reminded to people to protect themselves before engaging in sexual contact with people outside of monogamous relationships.
