Background In July 2018, the Philippines Department of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization implemented the Enhanced Gonococcal Antimicrobial Surveillance Program (EGASP). The Philippines is the second country to implement EGASP to monitor antimicrobial susceptibility trends of Neisseria gonorrhoeae (GC).

Methods Men with urethral discharge were enrolled at 4 participating sentinel clinics in Metro Manila. Symptomatic men had demographic and clinical data collected; two urethral swabs were collected for gram stain and culture. All positive cultures had antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) performed by 2 participating reference laboratories to determine minimum inhibitory concentrations for Cefixime, Ceftriaxone, Azithromycin, and Gentamicin using E-test.

Results From July – September 2018, 92 specimens were collected from symptomatic men; 61 (66%) were culture confirmed and all GC isolates had AST. Among 60 men with at least one GC infection, 32 (53%) were classified as men who have sex with women only, 15 (25%) as men who have sex with men and 13 (22%) were men who have sex with men and women. The median age of men was 24 years (range 15 –52 years), 12 (20%) had antibiotic use in the last 2 weeks, 4 (7%) had travel in the last 30 days, and 43 (72%) received combination therapy of Ceftriaxone (250 mg, 500 mg or 1 g) or Cefixime 400 mg PLUS Doxycycline 100 mg or Azithromycin 1 g. Only 6 (10%) did not have treatment documented. No isolates had elevated MICs to the antimicrobials tested.

Conclusion We report on the first months of data from EGASP Philippines demonstrating the feasibility of collecting standardized and systematic epidemiological and laboratory data. All isolates were susceptible to all tested antimicrobials. Continued surveillance is critical to monitor for emerging resistance and to inform local and regional treatment recommendations.

Disclosure No significant relationships.