'Incurable STI' is ravaging nearly one billion people as experts issue urgent warning
Nearly one billion people world wide - around 24% of all those aged below 50 - have an incurable STI, with experts warning that nobody appears to have a plan to deal with it
A whopping 900 million people have an incurable STI, a new study claims. According to a team led by epidemiologist Manale Harfouche from the Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar, genital herpes is the most common incurable sexually transmitted infection contracted around the world. A staggering 24% of people aged under 50 worldwide have been struck by it.
They also found that around 520 million of those with it have the HSV-2 strain, which can cause painful blisters or ulcers on private areas and is spread by skin-to-skin contact. The group also found that 129 million cases of chlamydia were reported in 2020 – although that is curable.
Harfouche warns: “HSV infections are widely prevalent in all global regions, leading to a significant burden... on psychosocial, sexual, and reproductive health, neonatal transmission, and HIV transmission.
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"However, hardly any specific programmes for HSV prevention and control exist, even in resource-rich countries partly due to the lack of tools to address such highly prevalent, often asymptomatic, and incurable infections on a population level.
“Available prevention modalities, including condoms and antiviral therapy, are insufficient to control infection transmission and have, at best, had a modest population impact in reducing incidence rates. There is a need for HSV prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines as a strategic approach to control transmission and to curb the disease and economic burdens of these infections.”
According to UK government data released earlier this year, 27,167 people contracted genital herpes for the first time in 2023 – an increase of 8.8% from 2022. No overall figure for those in the UK with the STI was given, nor was a plan to deal with the issue.
It did, however, detail how in 2023 there were 401,800 diagnoses of new STIs, an increase of 4.7% since 2022m and that chlamydia diagnoses (all ages) remained stable with 194,970 diagnoses in 2023 compared to 194,244 diagnoses in 2022.
It was also revealed that those aged 15 to 24 were the most at risk of picking up an STI.
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