Are we heading for a world without antibiotics?
November 18th is European Antibiotic Awareness Day. Why yet another "Day of this or that"?
Because we are in serious trouble, With growing antibiotic resistance and no new antibiotic groups in the pipeline, many infections previously easily treated with antibiotics are now proving increasingly difficult and often impossible to overcome. Before the advent of antibiotics in the 1940s, people used to die commonly and in large numbers from pneumonia, meningitis, TB, septicaemia and other everyday infections which, until recently, were curable with antibiotics. However, we are now seeing increasing death-rates from these infections due to drug resistance.
The World Health Organisation in 2009 declared antibiotic resistance to be one of the three greatest threats to human health.
Why is this? Widespread use of antibiotics and commonly incomplete courses have encouraged the microbes to evolve resistance - Darwinian 'selection of the fittest' in all too obvious action. The problem has been compounded by easy international travel - we can spread resistant bugs rapidly around the world- in many countries, antibiotics are readily available 'over the counter' and are used inappropriately on a wide scale. Antibiotics are used in animal husbandry across the world as 'growth promoters'.
MRSA and multi-drug resistant TB and E.Coli are often in the news but there are many other common infections we are seeing become frequently resistant too, from skin to gut to sexually transmitted diseases to respiratory to infections in childbirth to urinary infections to surgical sepsis and many more.
What would, a world without effective antibiotics look like?
Here are just a few consequences:• Simple infections such as tonsillitis or an infected scratch on the skin could kill again.
•Transplant surgery becomes virtually impossible. Organ recipients have to take immune-suppressing drugs for life to stop rejection of a new heart or kidney. Their immune systems cannot fight off life-threatening infections without antibiotics.• Removing a burst appendix becomes a dangerous operation once again. Patients are routinely given antibiotics after surgery to prevent the wound becoming infected by bacteria. If bacteria get into the bloodstream, they can cause life-threatening septicaemia.• Pneumonia becomes once more "the old man's friend". Antibiotics have stopped it being the mass-killer it once was, particularly among the old and frail, who would lapse into unconsciousness and often slip away in their sleep. Other diseases of old age, such as cancer, have taken over.• Gonorrhea becomes hard to treat. Resistant strains are already on the rise. Without treatment, the sexually transmitted disease causes pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility and ectopic pregnancies.• Tuberculosis becomes incurable – first we had TB, then multi-drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and now there is XDR-TB (extremely drug resistant TB).
So what can we do?
We must stop using antibiotics for unnecessary self-limiting illnesses such as coughs, colds, flu, sore throats, minor skin infections and so on. They usually do nothing to limit the infection anyway (we often get better after we've taken antibiotics and think, wrongly they were responsible for curing us. Usually it is our immune systems fighting off a virus that the antibiotics could never affect in any case.
Please watch this video, become an Antibiotic Guardian and spread the word!
Here is a useful fact sheet for a more detailed explanation of the problem
Antibiotic Action is a pressure group to raise awareness and help look for solutions.
Because we are in serious trouble, With growing antibiotic resistance and no new antibiotic groups in the pipeline, many infections previously easily treated with antibiotics are now proving increasingly difficult and often impossible to overcome. Before the advent of antibiotics in the 1940s, people used to die commonly and in large numbers from pneumonia, meningitis, TB, septicaemia and other everyday infections which, until recently, were curable with antibiotics. However, we are now seeing increasing death-rates from these infections due to drug resistance.
Each year in the United States, at least 2 million people become infected with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics and at least 23,000 people die each year as a direct result of these infections. Many more people die from other conditions that were complicated by an antibiotic-resistant infection.
The World Health Organisation in 2009 declared antibiotic resistance to be one of the three greatest threats to human health.
Why is this? Widespread use of antibiotics and commonly incomplete courses have encouraged the microbes to evolve resistance - Darwinian 'selection of the fittest' in all too obvious action. The problem has been compounded by easy international travel - we can spread resistant bugs rapidly around the world- in many countries, antibiotics are readily available 'over the counter' and are used inappropriately on a wide scale. Antibiotics are used in animal husbandry across the world as 'growth promoters'.
MRSA and multi-drug resistant TB and E.Coli are often in the news but there are many other common infections we are seeing become frequently resistant too, from skin to gut to sexually transmitted diseases to respiratory to infections in childbirth to urinary infections to surgical sepsis and many more.
What would, a world without effective antibiotics look like?
Here are just a few consequences:• Simple infections such as tonsillitis or an infected scratch on the skin could kill again.
•Transplant surgery becomes virtually impossible. Organ recipients have to take immune-suppressing drugs for life to stop rejection of a new heart or kidney. Their immune systems cannot fight off life-threatening infections without antibiotics.• Removing a burst appendix becomes a dangerous operation once again. Patients are routinely given antibiotics after surgery to prevent the wound becoming infected by bacteria. If bacteria get into the bloodstream, they can cause life-threatening septicaemia.• Pneumonia becomes once more "the old man's friend". Antibiotics have stopped it being the mass-killer it once was, particularly among the old and frail, who would lapse into unconsciousness and often slip away in their sleep. Other diseases of old age, such as cancer, have taken over.• Gonorrhea becomes hard to treat. Resistant strains are already on the rise. Without treatment, the sexually transmitted disease causes pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility and ectopic pregnancies.• Tuberculosis becomes incurable – first we had TB, then multi-drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and now there is XDR-TB (extremely drug resistant TB).
So what can we do?
We must stop using antibiotics for unnecessary self-limiting illnesses such as coughs, colds, flu, sore throats, minor skin infections and so on. They usually do nothing to limit the infection anyway (we often get better after we've taken antibiotics and think, wrongly they were responsible for curing us. Usually it is our immune systems fighting off a virus that the antibiotics could never affect in any case.
Please watch this video, become an Antibiotic Guardian and spread the word!
Here is a useful fact sheet for a more detailed explanation of the problem
Antibiotic Action is a pressure group to raise awareness and help look for solutions.
Comments
Post a Comment