Plagues,
Pestilences and Diseases
Resistance to antibiotics could bring "the end of modern
medicine as we know it", WHO claim
The world is entering an antibiotic crisis which could make
routine operations impossible and a scratched knee potentially
fatal, the head of the World Health Organisation has claimed.
Bacteria carried by humans are becoming increasingly resistant to
antibiotics
By Hannah Furness
7:00AM GMT 26 Mar 2012
The Telegraph UK
Margaret Chan, director general of the WHO, warned that bacteria
were starting to become so resistant to common antibiotics that it
could bring about “the end of modern medicine as we know it.”
As a result, she claimed, every antibiotic ever developed is at
risk of becoming useless, making once-routine operations
impossible.
This would include many of the breakthrough drugs developed to
treat tuberculosis, malaria, bacterial infections and HIV/AIDS, as
well as simple treatments for cuts.
Speaking to a conference of infectious disease experts in
Copenhagen, Dr Chan said we could be entering into a
“post-antibiotic era”.
Replacement medicines could become more expensive, with longer
periods of treatment required to bring about the same effect, she
added.
Dr Chan said: “Things as common as strep throat or a child’s
scratched knee could once again kill.
“Antimicrobial resistance is on the rise in Europe and elsewhere
in the world. We are losing our first-line antimicrobials.
“Replacement treatments are more costly, more toxic, need much
longer durations of treatment, and may require treatment in
intensive care units.
“For patients infected with some drug-resistant pathogens,
mortality has been shown to increase by around 50 per cent.
“A post-antibiotic era means, in effect, an end to modern medicine
as we know it.”
The stark warning comes shortly after the World Health
Organisation published a new book warning of the “global crisis”,
entitled “The evolving threat of antimicrobial resistance.”
It reads: “Bacteria which cause disease react to the antibiotics
used as treatment by becoming resistant to them, sooner or later.
“A crisis has been building up over the decades, so that today
many common and life-threatening infections are becoming difficult
or even impossible to treat, sometimes turning a common infection
into a life-threatening one.”
The paper blamed the current situation largely on the misuse of
antibiotics, which are not prescribed properly and used too
frequently and for too long.
It added that an “inexorable increase in antimicrobial-resistant
infections, a dearth of new antibiotics in the pipeline and little
incentive for industry to invest in research and development” had
led to a need for innovation”.
The WHO has now appealed to governments across the world to
support research into the antimicrobial resistance.