Drug-resistant strains of gonorrhoea have spread to countries across the world, the United Nations health agency says, and millions of patients may run out of treatment options unless doctors catch and treat cases earlier.

Scientists reported last year finding a ‘superbug’ strain of gonorrhoea in Japan in 2008 that was resistant to all recommended antibiotics and warned then that it could transform a once easily treatable infection into a global health threat.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said those fears were now reality with many more countries, including Britain, Australia, France, Norway and Sweden reporting cases of the sexually transmitted disease resistant to cephalosporin antibiotics – normally the last option against gonorrhoea.

‘Gonorrhoea is becoming a major public health challenge,’ said Manjula Lusti-Narasimhan, from the WHO’s department of reproductive health and research. She said more than 106 million people were newly infected with the disease every year.

‘The organism is what we term a superbug – it has developed resistance to virtually every class of antibiotics that exists,’ she told a briefing in Geneva. ‘If gonococcal infections become untreatable, the health implications are significant.’

If left untreated, gonorrhoea can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy, stillbirths, severe eye infections in babies and infertility in […]