Gonorrhoea Information

Gonorrhoea is transmitted through sexual activity involving the vagina, penis, anus and mouth. In some cases it can be spread from a mother to her baby during birth, which can cause numerous complications with the baby's health. It is a bacterium that can infect a woman's reproductive tract and also the urethra in men and women. It can also affect the mouth, throat, eyes and anus. It is the most common STI after chlamydia and it is on the rise. Gonorrhoea can also infect the blood and joints, and may then be life threatening.

Symptoms

In both men and women the symptoms may appear within three to five days of infection, although sometimes it can take up to 30 days.

Treatment

Gonorrhoea can be treated with antibiotics although many antibiotics are no longer effective because of growing resistance. The current recommended treatment for Gonorrhoea is oral Azithromycin along with an intramuscular injection of Ceftriaxone. Where this type of treatment is not possible for whatever reason, Azithromycin can be co-administered with Cefixime.

It is recommend that you are retested for gonorrhoea no less than 3 weeks after your treatment finishes to make sure all traces of the infection are gone.

If you have symptoms that sound like Gonorrhoea, it is important not to attempt to guess what infection you may have. If you are experiencing symptoms such as pain when passing urine or have a genital discharge, we suggest our Full Sexual Health Screen so that we can correctly identify any problems. Many bacterial infections of the genital area produce very similar symptoms, hence the requirement for testing.