For the first time in 13 years, the World Health Organization on Tuesday is outlining new recommendations on how to treat three common sexually transmitted diseases, one of which — gonorrhea — has been rapidly developing resistance to nearly every weapon in the medical arsenal.
The voluminous guidelines are used by member countries to develop their own guidance to doctors for the treatment of gonorrhea, syphilis, and chlamydia.
The guidelines for each spell out the best approach in a variety of scenarios. But the most pressing need, the WHO acknowledged, was to update advice on how to treat gonorrhea. The wily bacteria that cause the disease is increasingly developing resistance to the antibiotics left that can cure it.
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