Since 1928, when Sir Alexander Fleming discovered the penicillin, antibiotics have helped us to fight disease. But now, the time has arrived: bacteria are growing resistant, they are becoming immune to current drugs and there are few antibiotics to replace them.
The Chief Medical Officer for England, Prof Dame Sally Davies, has warned of the rise of these species of superbugs and she told a committee of MPs that even going for a routine operation could become deadly due to the threat of infection.
According to her words, the rise in drug resistant infections is comparable to the threat of global warming because it’s a problem that affects every single Country on the Earth (antibiotic resistant strains have even been found in Antarctica) and would merit an extra-attention. It’d be as a “ticking time bomb”, Prof Dame Sally Davies said and further “If you get an infection in your bloodstream, in about 10, 20 years it might be untreatable”, thus it’s time we stopped treating winter colds with such a powerful weapon.
The infographics below show, through figures published by European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and gathered by The Guardian, how this is a topic that can’t be absolutely put off.
The annual report of the Chief Medical Officer out yesterday 11th of March finds that “While a new infectious disease has been discovered nearly every year over the past 30 years, there have been very few new antibiotics developed leaving our armoury nearly empty as diseases evolve and become resistant to existing drugs”.
The World Health Organisation estimates antibiotic-resistant infections cost the EU €1.5bn and the US some $30bn a year. Meanwhile in Russia, 83.6% of families routinely use them.
SOURCE: ECDC (click on the immage)
SOURCE: ECDC
Experts said antibiotics have been one of the greatest success stories in medicine. Nevertheless, bacteria are a rapidly adapting foe which find new ways to evade drugs.
Indeed MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) has suddenly become one of the most feared words in hospitals wards and there are growing reports of resistance in strains of E. coli, tuberculosis and gonorrhoea.
With regard to this fearful trouble, Dame Sally urged the government to raise the issue during next G8 Summit in London. She said pharmaceutical companies needed to be incite to develop new drugs, because the manufacture of antibiotics was not viewed as profitable.
“We haven’t had a new class of antibiotics since the late 80s and there are very few antibiotics in the pipeline of the big pharmaceutical companies that develop and make drugs” she said.
But Dame Sally hasn’t been the first chief medical officer to underline the dangers of antibiotic overuse.
In 2008 her predecessor, Liam Donaldson, urged doctors not to use antibiotics to treat colds and coughs as these are caused by viruses and do not respond to antibiotics. Even in 1999, Sir Kenneth Calman made a similar call to the people, saying the public had a responsibility not to demand antibiotics.
So, wheter a word is enough to the wise, let’s hope that at least a couple will be enough for human beings.