The total number of confirmed cases of gonorrhea reached a record high of 4,455 people last year, while the average increase over the past five years was about 18 percent, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, urging people to engage in safe sex to prevent sexually transmitted diseases.
According to the centers’ disease surveillance data, the number of gonorrhea cases has continued to increase in the past five years, from 2,023 in 2012 to 3,587 in 2015 and 4,455 last year.
While infections in all age groups from 10 to 59 have increased over this period, the rates increased most rapidly in the 10-to-29 age group (27 percent) and the 20-to-29 age group (22 percent), it said.
Although the majority of gonorrhea cases are in men, with the male-to-female incidence ratio 14 to 1 in the past five years, the CDC said the annual increase in women (20 percent) was slightly higher than among men (18 percent).
“Both men and women should engage in safe sex to prevent the disease,” CDC Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said, adding that with the arrival of Valentine’s Day next week, the CDC urged people to avoid having sex with strangers or multiple sexual partners, to refuse illegal drugs and to use a condom during the whole process of sexual intercourse.
Symptoms of gonorrhea in men can include urinary infection and festering sores that emerge about two to seven days after infection and cause a burning or stinging sensation when urinating, while symptoms in women are often mild and more easily missed, the CDC said.
“Because gonorrhea has developed partial or general resistance to two types of antibiotics, we urge doctors to prescribe intramuscular antibiotics, while oral antibiotics can be prescribed along with the injection, but definitely not as the sole treatment,” Lo said.
A CDC study of 1,840 bacterial strains showed that gonorrhea has 95 percent resistance to the common oral antibiotic ciprofloxacin and a 2 percent resistance to another common oral antibiotic, azithromycin.
Treatment failure can occur from only taking oral medication, while untreated gonorrhea or delayed treatment can cause infertility in both sexes, so people should not neglect the disease, Lo said.
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