Despite the JCVI’s recommendation more than a year ago, successive governments have shown no signs of preparing to implement a gonorrhoea vaccination programme. Ian Howley, CEO of health and wellbeing charity LGBT HERO, tells Huck that “we’ve seen this kind of heel-dragging before” with regard to HIV prevention drug PrEP.
The potentially game-changing pill became available on the NHS in 2017 – first in Scotland, then in other UK regions – following tireless lobbying from LGBTQ+ community groups. “It does seem as though [public health officials] won’t engage with STI prevention methods unless we fight for them,” Howley says. “So I think we’re all going to have to come together again to put pressure on those in charge.”
This pressure is already being applied by two leading sexual health charities. Last month, Terrence Higgins Trust and the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV (BASHH) issued a joint statement calling for the “urgent roll-out” of the vaccine. The latter’s president Professor Matt Phillips said: “Vaccines such as 4CMenB are not just good for individual patients, who are our top priority, but are also critical to tackle deepening inequalities and to reduce longer-term complications from infections such as gonorrhoea.”
In the meantime, individual patients can access MenB if they can afford to pay for it. Both Boots and Superdrug offer the vaccine to adults for £110 a dose. Joey Knock decided to fork out for two doses from Boots earlier this year after seeing an adult content creator post about the vaccine. “Because I seem to be quite susceptible to gonorrhoea and my symptoms can be quite severe, I figured it was worth a try because I was going to [fetish festival] Darklands at the end of February,” he says.
Joey booked his MenB jabs online after answering some “general health questions to check I’d be OK with the vaccine”. But even when he went into Boots to receive his doses, he faced no intrusive questions asking why he needed it.
10 months later, he feels it’s “definitely been worth it” as part of his self-made package of sexual health protection. Joey also takes DoxyPEP – a dose of the common antibiotic doxycycline after condomless sex – because clinical studies have shown this cuts the risk of contracting syphilis, gonorrhoea and chlamydia. “I went to Darklands which I basically used as a four-day orgy and had no STI at all afterwards,” he says. “I did get a positive result for gonorrhoea in April but that’s the last time I’ve had it.”
Like MenB, DoxyPEP isn’t currently available on the NHS, but anecdotal evidence suggests it’s already proving popular among MSM with multiple sexual partners. “It’s really catching on and we’re very, very close to formal implementation [on the NHS],” Dr Weil says.
But it almost goes without saying that the present situation is less than ideal. When it comes to preventing gonorrhoea, a two-tier system seems to be developing where some at-risk people have the money and knowledge to protect themselves, and others simply don’t. For this reason, granting easy access to MenB on the NHS is absolutely vital sooner rather than later.
Terrence Higgins Trust’s chief executive, Richard Angell OBE, tells Huck: “It’s time for the government to commission this vaccine for those who most need it. The introduction of a MenB vaccination programme to prevent gonorrhoea would be a world first – we can and must lead the way on this.”
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