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Gonorrhea is on the rise in Canada and growing dangerously resistant to even the most potent antibiotics. After 20 years of constant decline, gonorrhea rates have jumped more than 40 percent over the past five years, Health Canada scientists report. Even more worrisome, drug-resistant strains of the disease are being reported across the country.

The National Laboratory for STDs is now receiving up to 5,000 isolates each year that are immune to at least one antibiotic. Moreover, the proportion of samples resistant to ciprofloxacin, one leading treatment, is soaring, jumping more than 200-fold in the past decade. The situation is grimmer in Atlantic Canada, where ciprofloxacin-resistant gonorrhea is double the national number.

Experts are blaming gonorrhea's revival in part on evaporating fears of HIV due to improved drug treatments. In addition, a new generation of sexually active youth never witnessed the early devastation of AIDS, said Dr. Janice Mann, acting manager of Health Canada's sexual health and STD section. Suddenly, the fear factor that once kept gonorrhea under control is vanishing.

Editor's Note: from the Calgary Herald