The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that a potentially dangerous sexually transmitted disease that infects
millions of people each year is growing resistant to drugs and could
soon become untreatable.
The U.N. health agency is urging governments and doctors to step up
surveillance of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea, a bacterial infection
that can cause inflammation, infertility, pregnancy complications and,
in extreme cases, lead to maternal death. Babies born to mothers with
gonorrhoea have a 50 percent chance of developing eye infections that can
result in blindness.
A scientist in the agency’s department of sexually transmitted diseases, Dr. Manjula Lusti-Narasimhan said "this organism has basically been developing resistance against every
medication we’ve thrown at it." This includes a group of antibiotics called cephalosporins currently
considered the last line of treatment.
She disclosed ahead of WHO’s public announcement on its ’global action
plan’ to combat the disease that "in a couple of years it will have become resistant to every
treatment option we have available now."
Lusti-Narasimhan said the new guidance is aimed at ending complacency
about gonorrhoea and encouraging researchers to speed up their hunt for a
new cure.
