NIT – Over the last 30 years, no major new type of antibiotics have been developed, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Wednesday, and bacteria resistant to antibiotic treatment are spreading across the planet at what the agency says is an alarming rate.
According to a global report released by the WHO, “the problem is so serious that it threatens the achievements of modern medicine. A post-antibiotic era – in which common infections and minor injuries can kill – is a very real possibility for the 21st century.”
Much of the problem is blamed on the over-prescribing of antibiotics. Antibiotic resistance causes people to be sick for longer and increases the risk of death. A report released in March from the Centers for Disease Control said that US hospitals are putting patients at risk by over-prescribing antibiotics, and may even be creating “super-resistant infections” that could be untreatable and lead to countless deaths.
The CDC said that more than half of all hospital patients receive an antibiotic and doctors in some hospitals prescribed 3 times as many antibiotics as doctors in other hospitals. The CDC said that reducing the use of high-risk antibiotics by 30% can lower deadly diarrhea infections by 26%.
Antibiotics save lives, the CDC said, but poor prescribing practices are putting patients at unnecessary risk for preventable allergic reactions, super-resistant infections, and deadly diarrhea. Errors in prescribing decisions also contribute to antibiotic resistance, making these drugs less likely to work in the future.
The CDC breaks down the problem like this: New microbes are emerging and spreading, drug resistance is rising, and laboratories around the world could intentionally or unintentionally release dangerous microbes. Globalization of travel and trade increase the chance and speed of these risks spreading.
To address these challenges, the CDC has joined with other U.S. government agencies and global partners to advance a Global Health Security Agenda. The aim of this agenda is to accelerate progress toward a safe world and to promote global health security as an international priority.
Even as these measures are taken, a key WHO doctor weighed in, saying that “Without urgent, coordinated action by many stakeholders, the world is headed for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries which have been treatable for decades can once again kill,” says Dr Keiji Fukuda, WHO’s Assistant Director-General for Health Security. “Effective antibiotics have been one of the pillars allowing us to live longer, live healthier, and benefit from modern medicine. Unless we take significant actions to improve efforts to prevent infections and also change how we produce, prescribe and use antibiotics, the world will lose more and more of these global public health goods and the implications will be devastating.”
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