The medics who spoke to the Star on the phone are in agreement that difficult-to-treat sexually transmitted infections have been rising in Nairobi, while attention was focused on Covid-19.
Of concern is gonorrhoea after researchers from the Kenya Medical Research Centre identified a strain that resisted all medication.
Doctors in Nairobi said they have routinely encountered stubborn gonorrhoea and other STIs that did not respond to all primary medications used.
Nairobi-based obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr John Nyamu said he handled one case that resisted most antibiotics last December.
“We did culture and tried all the recommended antibiotics and they did not work. We then gave stronger medication, which finally worked. So there’s definitely a resistant strain around,” he told the Star.
Dr Tonny Kamau, a medic from Nairobi Women’s Hospital, also said there has been a rise in people presenting with gonorrhoea.
“It is very common nowadays that every week I must attend to at least three clients either from the city or Kiambu,” he said.
A study by Kemri researchers, reported by the Star on Thursday, showed the prevalence of neisseria gonorrhoeae infection was 6.3 per cent in 2022 among female sex workers in Nairobi. The highest prevalence (13.8 per cent) was in the age group of 38–49 years.
There is no reliable data on the prevalence in the general population because of a lack of registries and the Ministry of Health, which has the capacity to conduct a national or regional survey, has not carried out one.
Past surveys in Nairobi placed the prevalence at about one per cent to three per cent depending on the population and location of study.
Kemri researchers reported the strain was resistant to all the antibiotics that were tested against it.
The World Health Organization recently reported that the overuse of antibiotics to treat the coronavirus — sometimes unnecessarily — may have caused the sexually transmitted infection to find a new way to thrive.
Dr Joseph Murithi, the vice president of practice at Pharmaceutical Society of Kenya, told the Star resistance to antibiotics means infections that are easy to treat with antibiotics will become difficult or impossible to treat.
“We have a major problem because not many novel antibiotic molecules are being made; most of those in the pipeline are just derivatives of existing antibiotics,” he said.
“Antibiotic resistance is a dangerous thing. Last December I received a patient who had used more than 21 antibiotics and was still suffering from a urinary tract infection,” Dr Murithi added.
Nairobi’s Special Treatment Centre, a skin clinic on Latema Road, better known as “Casino Hospital”, said they see as many as 10 new clients daily with various sexually transmitted infections.
Medics there spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak on behalf of the city county-owned facility.
“Most of it is chlamydia, syphilis and gonorrhoea,” one nurse said.
“Yes many of them are difficult to treat and you must give the patient many antibiotics until you get one that works.”
The hospital mainly treats burns and skin conditions but is best known for its STIs work.
The Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS) of 2014, has statistics on the self-reported prevalence of STIs and STI symptoms in the country.
Two per cent of both women and men reported having had an STI in the 12 months preceding the survey. Six per cent of women and two per cent of men reported recently experiencing an STI or STI symptoms.
Women who are currently married or living together with a partner (six per cent) and those who are divorced, separated, or widowed (seven per cent) have a higher prevalence of STIs and STI symptoms than women who have never been married (four per cent).
Women at the Coast (10 per cent) and Western (11 per cent) are more likely to have STI or STI symptoms than women in other regions.
“The prevalence of STIs or STI symptoms is higher among divorced, separated, or widowed men (six per cent) and uncircumcised men (six per cent) than among their counterparts. The highest prevalence of STIs and STI symptoms occurs in Nyanza (six per cent),” the survey shows.
Diseases that have shown some or total antimicrobial resistance include some strains of:
Covid-19, Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic feverEbola virus disease and Marburg virus disease,Lassa fever,Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), nipah and henipaviral diseases, urinary tract disease, Rift Valley fever, zika.
(Edited by V. Graham)
