Worries Grow About Treating Gonorrhea
June 12, 2012
Public service posters in English and Spanish in 2011 for a program to provide young women in South Los Angeles with home-testing kits for sexually transmitted diseases. Los Angeles County had the highest number of chlamydia cases and the second-highest n
This is the VOA Special English Health Report.
Each year an estimated one hundred six million people get infected with gonorrhea. This sexually transmitted disease is getting harder and harder to treat.
The World Health Organization says gonorrhea is increasingly resistant to antibiotics. The WHO warns that there are few treatment options available, and that the world is running out of ways to cure it.
Manjula Lusti-Narasimhan is a scientist in the Department of Sexually Transmitted Diseases at the WHO. She explains what could happen if this bacterial disease becomes untreatable.
MANJULA LUSTI-NARASIMHAN: "For men and women of reproductive age, they could become infertile. For women who are pregnant, they could have ectopic pregnancies or spontaneous abortions that could increase maternal deaths. And for infants born to these women with untreated gonorrhea, we already know that over half of them develop severe eye infections and many of these could lead to blindness."
Gonorrhea is one of four major sexually transmitted infections that can be cured. The other three are chlamydial infection, syphilis and chancroid.
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