Treatment of gonorrhoea made impossible due to superbugs

Resistance to antibiotics is creating difficulty in treating gonorrhea and even sometimes making it impossible to treat, according to the World Health Orgainsation's reports based on data from 77 countries. Gonorrhoea is a common sexually transmitted infection.

In India, there is an immense increase in antibiotic resistance. Much of the problem arises due to over prescription of drugs by doctors and irrational over-the counter sale of antibiotics. The data was evaluated through two latest studies published in international journal PLOS. According to the data, each year around 78 million people are infected with gonorrhea on a global level.

However this might be an underestimation because only those countries where surveillance is best and with particularly with high income- have cases of infection that cannot be treated by all known antibiotics.

"These cases may just be the tip of the iceberg, since systems to diagnose and report untreatable infections are lacking in lower-income countries where gonorrhoea is actually more common," said Dr Teodora Wi, medical officer, human reproduction, WHO.

"The bacteria that cause gonorrhoea are particularly smart. Every time we use a new class of antibiotics to treat the infection, the bacteria evolves to resist them," he added.

According to WHO Global Gonococcal Antimicrobial Surveillance Programme, in the years 2009-2014 (97% of countries that reported data in that period found drug-resistant strains) a widespread resistance to ciprofloxacin was found, resistance to azithromycin was reported by 81% countries, and the emergence of resistance to the current last-resort treatment: the extended-spectrum cephalosporins (ESCs) oral cefixime or injectable ceftriaxone was 66%.

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