The World Health Organization has expressed concern about a sharp rise in sexually transmitted infections worldwide. Its director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a briefing in Geneva that a new WHO report shows syphilis infections rose by 1 million to 8 million in 2022, with 230,000 people dying.
“The new data show that sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise in most regions,” he said, adding that “new syphilis cases among people aged 15-49 years increased by almost one million to 8 million in 2022, with 230,000 deaths.”
The highest increases in incidence were recorded in the Americas and Africa.
According to the report, the incidence of multidrug-resistant gonorrhea has also increased. As of 2023, nine countries reported that they had identified increased levels of drug resistance in the gonorrhea pathogen. The WHO concluded that HIV and viral hepatitis “continue to pose serious public health challenges”, claiming 2.5 million lives annually.
In 2022, there were about 1.2 million new cases of hepatitis B and nearly 1 million new cases of hepatitis C. Experts estimate that the number of deaths from viral hepatitis has increased from 1.1 million in 2019 to 1.3 million in 2022. The number of new HIV cases, though declining, has fallen, but not by much: from 1.5 million in 2020 to 1.3 million in 2022. HIV-related deaths remain high, with 630,000 deaths in 2022, 13 per cent of which were children under the age of 15.
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