The STD Risk Increases !

The last great STD panic was over Aids and we were treated to a very explicit advertisement depicting the Grim Reaper in a bowling alley.  Instead of skittles falling beneath the balls, it was men, women and children.  It delivered a compelling message.

For a while, Aids cut a swathe through the gay community but now it is considered " manageable " . People with the disease now commonly live to a ripe old age and the hysteria has abated. Along with Aids, most sexually transmitted diseases are no longer feared because we think that they are easily treated.  We have become complacent and we tend to ignore the warnings that reduce the STD risk.

Now an old horror from yesteryear is making a comeback.  Gonorrhoea is particularly rife in the Sydney and Melbourne community density and a severe strain is becoming totally immune to the antibiotic that used to deliver a cure.

This strain is Neisseria gonorrhoea and the antibiotic that has been our saviour is azithromycin.
What is alarming the medical profession is the sharp upward curve in alerts to this disease. between 2016 and 2017.  They have risen 182%.  It is on the cusp of becoming out of control.

Ominously, Azithromycin non-susceptible gonorrhoea is now the most frequently reported critical antimicrobial resistant threat to our last line of defence.   What the doctors and scientists refer to as the " super-super bugs " !

Untreated gonorrhoea could lead to infertility in women and there is a real danger if this gets out of control we may end up with mass infertility.  If this is to be beaten we need action on two fronts.  We need to sharpen up our attention and take the precautions that limit the spread of the disease - and those who suspect they are infected need to get urgent medical attention to limit further exposure.

Unfortunately, the resistance to antibiotics shows no sign of easing.  For a long time we though this was caused by patients not completing their antibiotic course fully, allowing bug survivors to mutate and grow immunity to the drug. Antibiotics were certainly far too readily subscribed, often for treatment of virus caused maladies, to which they were not applicable.

Perhaps a greater risk is coming from the agricultural industries.   The economics of modern farming require high density  pigs, chickens and other livestock to be cultivated in bulk and this increases the spread of disease.  All are mass treated with antibiotics to keep such diseases under control, and again what is really an over use allow the mutation to anti-biotic resistance to take hold.

Public attitudes are unhelpful.  We seem to think that science will always keep ahead of the super bugs, but that is not guaranteed.  Medicine has made great strides in the past century, but the Achilles heel is antibiotic resistance.  If that defence fails, things as simple as a paper cut or a graze in the garden could deliver a death sentence.

It seems that we must again start to plan to avoid STD's with caution !