Super-resistant STI should be a warning to everyone

Usually, when something is prefixed with “super”, it’s grounds for celebration or admiration: superstar, supernova, Super Saturday. That was until we learnt about super-gonorrhoea. We don’t have many details, but enough to get flashbacks of the Aids terror that put paid to many a sex life in the Eighties (pictured).

Here in 2018, a man visiting southeast Asia picked up a woman and contracted a highly resistant sexually transmitted infection, which he duly took home. There was medical consternation when he did not respond to first-line antibiotic treatments.

Now, we’ve all had mixed results with antibiotics and it’s not uncommon to traipse back to the GP, demanding a different prescription. However, the World Health Organisation and the European Centres for Disease Control agree it is the first time that a case such as this has ever been reported.

The fear is that antibiotic drug resistance is spreading far beyond STIS, and will soon render our most important, life-saving class of drugs ineffective for all kinds of infections. That super-gonorrhoea is a sexual disease must surely make the use of condoms non-negotiable. But its dire health implications go far beyond the bedroom.

An estimated 5,000 people in Britain and 700,000 worldwide are already dying every year because of antimicrobial resistance. A Government-commissioned report has warned that, unless action is taken, the death toll could rise to 10million annually by 2050.

So next time your GP tells you that you don’t need antibiotics and that your ailment will go away by itself, don’t insist. Just do the super-philanthropic thing and go home to bed. For all our sakes.