Antibiotic Resistant Infections

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:58 pm on 3 July 2019.

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Photo of Jenny Rathbone Jenny Rathbone Labour 2:58, 3 July 2019

Thank you, Minister. There's been a 44 per cent increase in syphilis in the last year and a 32 per cent increase in gonorrhoea. And what concerns me most about that, talking to sexual health experts, is that a significant proportion of the presenting infections are the antibiotic-resistant forms of those. I appreciate that you have accepted the sexual health review recommendations to reduce the transmission of sexually transmitted infections, and I just wondered how much that task is hampered by the level of antibiotic-resistant versions of this, because, obviously, in the past, this was something that people died of. With antibiotics, people are able to survive and continue to live normal lives. We are in danger of going back to the nineteenth century.