Meningococcal vaccination to prevent gonorrhoea — England’s doing it, should Australia join in?
NHS England decided that randomised trials were not worth the wait.
The clues are in the names: Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Neisseria meningitidis are genetically similar bacteria.
That is why NHS England’s world-first, free gonorrhoea vaccination program, targeting gay and bisexual men, will use GSK’s meningococcal B vaccine, Bexsero.
It will avert 110,000 cases over a decade and save taxpayers $16 million, according to a Lancet Infectious Diseases study.
However, GSK did not request the program or even run a randomised trial of Bexsero for gonorrhoea prevention.
