New Drug-Resistant Super Gonorrhea Causing Public Health Scare, Scramble For Containment

A recently discovered strain of gonorrhea is now causing health officials to panic in the UK because of how resistant it is to medical treatment and how severely contagious it appears. This is just the latest development in the escalating threat of superbugs that are the result of misusing over-the-counter medicine. This time, however, it seems the threat is on a public health level.

Superbugs might be old news, but this new super-powered strain of gonorrhea is no laughing matter. As The Guardian notes, this is the first time that the infection has managed to resist all standard antibiotics. The patient to suffer the disease has apparently had several sexual encounters both in the UK and in Southeast Asia, so the country’s health department is now trying to contain the situation.

Cases wherein diseases start to affect public health in developed countries are actually quite rare, all things considered, and there’s a reason for it. Governments in industrialized nations have learned their lesson after the Spanish flu absolutely decimated entire communities all over the world.

In the case of this super gonorrhea, it seems it’s just the one case reported, but with such a virulent bug, it’s always better to be safe than risk an outbreak. The patient’s partner has also been tested for the bug and has appeared to be free of the infection.

The biggest problem when it comes to superbugs is the fact that developing new antibiotics is difficult, Futurism reports. The drug actually hasn’t moved that far following the discovery of penicillin and a huge part of this is because drug companies are not providing enough funding into antibiotic R&D.

There’s hardly any money to be made in developing antibiotics that can take on super bacteria, at this point, which is why there’s hardly any investment. If the evolution of superbugs continues on its current trajectory, however, this could soon change.