If you weren’t worried enough, here’s reason enough to worry. The World Health Organization just issued a report that suggests we’re entering the “post-antibiotic” age, that resistance to antibiotics is on the rise globally, that we have far too little information on this, and that remarkably few resources are going into it. The prospect is scary. Here’s part of what the report in Nature magazine has to say on this. Tom “The post-antibiotic era is near, according to a report released today by the World Health Organization (WHO). The decreasing effectiveness of antibiotics and other antimicrobial agents is a global problem, and a surveillance system should be established to monitor it, the group says. “There is nothing hopeful in the WHOs report, which pulls together data from 129 member states to show extensive resistance to antimicrobial agents in every region of the world. Overuse of antibiotics in agriculture — to promote livestock growth — and in hospitals quickly leads to proliferation of drug-resistant bacteria, which then spread via human travel and poor sanitation practices. ‘A post-antibiotic era — in which common infections and minor injuries can kill — far from being an apocalyptic fantasy, is instead a very real possibility for the twenty-first century,’ writes Keiji Fukuda, WHO assistant director-general for health security, in a foreword to the report. “Perhaps the most worrying trend is the spread of resistance to carbapenems, the antibiotics of last resort, says Timothy Walsh, a medical microbiologist at Cardiff University, UK, who was an adviser for the report. ‘That’s taken us by surprise,’ he says. ‘All of us are rather like rabbits in front of the headlights in how quickly this has taken off.’” nature/news/who-warns-against-post-antibiotic-era-1.15135
Posted on: Fri, 02 May 2014 13:05:30 +0000
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