Gonorrhoea

Gonorrhoea is a bacterial infection of the genitals, throat, or anus. You can get gonorrhoea from having unprotected vaginal, anal, or oral sex with someone.

Unprotected sex is when you have sex without a condom, or an oral dam. If you have gonorrhoea, and you don’t get it treated, it can cause more serious infection, and problems with fertility.

If you give birth and you have gonorrhoea, the baby can become infected with gonorrhoea. 

Some people won’t notice any symptoms of gonorrhoea — which is why it’s so important to get regular STI tests. If you do have symptoms, they might include: 

• Unusual discharge from your penis, vagina, or anus 
• Bleeding between periods 
• Lower belly pain 
• Pain when you mimi 
• Pain when you have sex 
• Pain in your testicles 

The only way to find out for sure if you have gonorrhoea is to get an STI test.

Testing for gonorrhoea is done by:  

• Collecting a urine sample  
• Taking a sample from your vagina, urethra, mouth, or anus with a swab — basically a long cotton bud.   

Either you, or a nurse or doctor, will take these samples.  

Your test samples will be sent to a laboratory for testing. You should be contacted with your test results within a week.  

Book an appointment with us — we can test for gonorrhoea. 

Gonorrhoea and fertility

If you have gonorrhoea and don't get it treated, it can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) or a “silent” infection of the upper genital tract – that's when an infection spreads without you noticing any symptoms. These issues can lead to infertility and make it harder for you to get pregnant in the future.

Gonorrhoea and pregnancy

It's important to treat gonorrhoea if you're pregnant. Gonorrhoea makes it more likely for you to have a miscarriage, for your baby to be born prematurely or weigh too little, and it can cause other issues as well.

Gonorrhoea and pēpi

Gonorrhoea can be transmitted to your baby during childbirth. This can cause a number of health problems, like infections, that range from mild to severe.

What can you do?

If you're worried you might have gonorrhoea, get an STI test and find out how gonorrhoea is treated.

Don’t worry! Gonorrhoea can be treated with antibiotics.

We can prescribe you two antibiotics that you will take together to treat a gonorrhoea infection. It’s important that you take all the antibiotics we prescribe you — your nurse or doctor will give you no more or less than you need. Make sure that you tell your nurse or doctor if you are allergic to antibiotics, or if you could be pregnant. This will help them prescribe you the correct antibiotics.

It's a really good idea to get another STI test three months after your gonorrhoea treatment.  

Condoms and oral dams can protect against gonorrhoea, and other STIs. Using lube with condoms can make sex more pleasurable for some people, and can prevent the condom from breaking by reducing friction.

Lots of STIs don’t have obvious symptoms — so it’s important to get tested for STIs before and after unprotected sex, or anytime you have sex with a new person. 

If you’re having sex with several people — or the person you have sex with is having sex with several people — talk to us about how often you should be screened for gonorrhoea and other STIs. 

If you find out that you have gonorrhoea, there are a few really important things that you need to do.

• Get treatment. Get treated for gonorrhoea. Treatment is easy — just book an appointment with us! Untreated gonorrhoea can be a serious threat to your health
• Tell people you've had sex with. If it's safe for you to do this: tell the people that you have had sex with recently that they might need to get tested or treated for gonorrhoea
• Avoid sex during treatment. It’s best not to have sex with anyone for at least 7 days after you, or the person you plan to have sex with, has finished treatment for gonorrhoea. If you do have sex, be sure to use condoms correctly