State public health departments are warning that absent an infusion of cash, they’ll have trouble restraining the spread of gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted disease that can cause infertility and even death.
 
“We’ve got a really tricky organism that keeps outwitting every drug brought against it, and we are on the last line of defense,” says William Smith, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors, which represents state public health officials who combat sexually transmitted diseases.
 
Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that gonorrhea infections were resisting the usual antibiotic regimen of cefixime pills. In response, the agency recommended that state public health officials track every gonorrhea case and ensure that patients receive an injection of the antibiotic ceftriaxone along with one of two other oral antibiotics, azithromycin or doxycycline.
 
As reported by the newsletter CQ HealthBeat, states learn of some 300,000 new gonorrhea cases each year but suspect that the actual number of infections is significantly higher. The infection is causes by a bacteria transmitted through sexual intercourse, and effective treatments knock it out. But left untreated, it can pose a grave risk. The CDC also asked states to examine the bacteria to test its drug resistance.
 
That would require states to buy new equipment and hire specially trained staff. The states will also have to expand their outreach to physicians, who may not know about the new treatment regimen. Smith says the states need more than $53 million to do what CDC is asking of them, but government responses to gonorrhea could be costing $780 million a year by 2020 if nothing is done soon.