China ‘not badly hit’ as sexually transmitted disease risks becoming untreatable, says health expert

China has not been hit as badly as developed countries by growing drug resistance to gonorrhoea, a Chinese health expert has said following the World Health Organisation’s recent release of new guidelines for treating the venereal disease.

The WHO guidelines have prompted fears that doctors are running out of effective drugs for gonorrhoea as patients grow resistant to cephalosporins, considered the right drug to treat the disease.

But despite China having a history of severe antibiotics abuse, the country actually suffers less severe resistance to cephalosporins than in developed countries.

“We have much lower drug resistance rate – about 5 per cent – to cephalosporins, which can free us from the fear that gonorrhoea will be beyond treatment for the time being,” said Xiao Yonghong, a professor at the Institute of Clinical Pharmacology at Peking University and a member of the National Health and Family Planning Commission’s rational drug use committee.

Facing the growing threat of antibiotics resistance, the WHO recently released new guidelines for the treatment of three common sexually transmitted diseases, leaving one of them, gonorrhoea, with fewer treatment options.