Treatment of gonorrhoea with a combination of probenecid and procaine penicillin in Rwanda.

Treatment of acute gonorrhoea with 1 g of probenecid orally followed after 1 h by 4.8 M-units of procaine penicillin intramuscularly yielded a 97.4% cure in men. The cure rate of 81.8% in women is not so satisfactory but the fact that the patients, mostly prostitutes, were chronically infected must be considered. The incidence of post-gonococcal urethritis in men was 34%. Disc sensitivity of neisseria gonorrhoea showed a similar pattern of mostly resistant strains for streptomycin, as in Uganda and Kenya. Ninety-four per cent of strains are sensitive to penicillin but these results must be confirmed by the more reliable dilution method. It is concluded that the treatment schedule studied, eventually simplified by the administration of probenecid and injections of penicillin simultaneously, can be recommended as a standard treatment for gonorrhoea in Rwanda.