U.K. doctors have alerted the World Health Organization and the European Centers for Disease Control about a citizen who recently contracted the “worst” case of “super gonorrhea.”
An unidentified British man won’t know for at least another month if a last-ditch dose of antibiotics will treat a sexually transmitted disease he contracted while in Southeast Asia.
Public Health England told media outlets this week that his strain of neisseria gonorrhoeae is the first that cannot be cured with first-choice antibiotics.
“This is the first time a case has displayed such high-level resistance to [combinations of azithromycin and ceftriaxone] and to most other commonly used antibiotics,” Dr. Gwenda Hughes of Public Health England told the BBC Wednesday.
Dr. Olwen Williams, president of the British Association for Sexual Health, said the new strain’s emergence “is of huge concern and is a significant development.”
The infected individual’s British partner did not contract the disease, the BBC reported.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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