The WHO recently said that an estimated one million new sexually transmitted infections (STIs) occur every single day.
As reported by the British Broadcasting Corporation, the WHO highlighted a lack of progress in stopping the spread of STIs, and says its figures were a wake-up call as experts were particularly concerned about the rise in drug-resistant STIs.
“We are seeing a concerning lack of progress in stopping the spread the sexually transmitted infections worldwide. This is a wake-up call for a concerted effort to ensure everyone, everywhere can access the services they need to prevent and treat these debilitating diseases.”
“Practicing safe sex, particularly through condom use and better access to testing are both crucial; in terms of treatment, bacterial STIs can be treated and cured with widely available medications,” the WHO says.
The Head of Wellcome’s Drug Resistant Infection programme, Dr Tim Jinks, said, “Untreatable cases of gonorrhea are harbingers of a wider crisis, where common infections are harder and harder to treat.
“We urgently need to reduce the spread of these infections and invest in new antibiotics and treatments to replace those that no longer work.”
Compared with its last analysis in 2012, the WHO reported no substantive decline in the rates of new or existing infections. It suggested around one in 25 people globally had at least one of these four STIs, with some experiencing multiple infections at the same time.
The figures suggested that among people aged 15-49 In 2016 there were”: 156 million cases of trichomoniasis; 127 million new cases of Chlamydia; 87 million new cases of gonorrhea and 6.3 million new cases of syphilis.
