Antibiotics can’t keep up with the bug

ALL types of gonorrhoea – historically called ‘the clap’ – are caused by the bacteria Neisseria gonorrhoeae.

It is quick to develop and strains mutate every few years to become resistant to drugs. As a result, doctors have frequently changed their recommended treatments to keep up with the bug. It stopped responding to penicillin in the 1980s.

When a strain becomes resistant to one of two antibiotics recommended to treat it, it is known as super gonorrhoea. Symptoms of the disease, which around 78million worldwide contract every year, include discharge, bleeding or pain when urinating.

But around one in two women and one in ten men will not experience any signs, which is why the infection is so easily spread.

Women who do not get treatment can develop pelvic inflammatory disease – an infection of the womb and ovaries which can cause infertility.