She said: “Gonorrhoea is a very smart bug, every time you introduce a new class of antibiotics to treat gonorrhoea, the bug becomes resistant.”

Worryingly, the vast majority of gonorrhoea infections are in poor countries where resistance is harder to detect. “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,” WHO expert, Teodora Wi, said in Geneva. With about 78 million people pick up the STI each year and its potential to cause infertility in severe cases, the data analysed by the World Health Organization from 77 countries indicates that gonorrhoea’s resistance to antibiotics was widespread. “Every time we use a new class of antibiotics to treat the infection, the bacteria evolve to resist them.”

The sexually transmitted disease can infect patients’ genitals, rectum and throat, and is estimated to strike 78 million people per year. The disease is particularly tough on women, and it’s frequently accompanied by pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility, ectopic pregnancy (when the fetus develops outside the uterus), and an increased risk of contracting HIV. In most countries, there is only a single antibiotic that remains effective for treating gonorrhoea, but resistance to it now been reported by the WHO in more than 50 countries. In order to address the issue, the WHO and The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) have launched a Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP), a not-for-profit research and development organisation with a mission of "developing new antibiotic treatments and promoting appropriate use while ensuring access for all in need." “To address the pressing need for new treatments for gonorrhoea, we urgently need to seize the opportunities we have with existing drugs and candidates in the pipeline,” said Manica Balasegaram, who directs the not-for-profit Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP).
According to the World Health Organization, antibiotic resistance is on the rise in strains of gonorrhoea. It says that there is a need to prevent the spread of these bacteria, recommending usage of condoms and an increase in research and development funding.