“Coordinated global action needed to address antimicrobial resistance and sexually transmitted infections”

“Left untreated gonorrhoea can cause serious and permanent health problems in both women and men. Over many decades, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the bacterium that causes gonorrhoea, has successively developed resistance to each class of antibiotics recommended for treatment and treatment options are becoming depleted – a worrying prospect given that an estimated 78 million people are infected with gonorrhoea each year globally.

In its Global Health Sector Strategy on STIs, the World Health Organization (WHO) highlighted that limited surveillance data have compromised the global response to combat gonorrhoea and other STIs, and set a milestone for 70% of countries to have STI surveillance systems in place by 2020 to enable the 2030 global targetsto be monitored.

The need to improve surveillance of AMR in gonorrhoea was recently highlighted by the joint WHO/Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative. In addition to gonorrhoea, there is global concern about high levels of AMR in other STIs such as Mycoplasma genitalium and Treponema pallidum (syphilis). The global threat of AMR to the effective treatment and control of STIs requires the establishment of international multidisciplinary professional networks to promote collaboration, develop surveillance strategies and define priorities for innovative research programmes.

To this end, we have established a new international network called STI-Net, a collaborative network of public health and academic professionals from partner organisations in Europe (the UK and Sweden with support from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control) and Brazil (multiple states with support from the Ministry of Health,), focusing on research on AMR in STIs. ”

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