Antibiotic Resistance Poses 'Catastrophic Threat': Health OfficialMonday, 11 Mar 2013
Antibiotic resistance poses a catastrophic threat to medicine
and could mean patients having minor surgery risk dying from
infections that can no longer be treated, Britain's top health
official said on Monday.
Sally Davies, the chief medical officer for England, said global
action is needed to fight antibiotic, or antimicrobial,
resistance and fill a drug "discovery void" by researching and
developing new medicines to treat emerging, mutating infections.
Only a handful of new antibiotics have been developed and
brought to market in the past few decades, and it is a race
against time to find more, as bacterial infections increasingly
evolve into "superbugs" resistant to existing drugs.
"Antimicrobial resistance poses a catastrophic threat. If we
don't act now, any one of us could go into hospital in 20 years
for minor surgery and die because of an ordinary infection that
can't be treated by antibiotics," Davies told reporters as she
published a report on infectious disease.
"And routine operations like hip replacements or organ
transplants could be deadly because of the risk of infection."
One of the best known superbugs, MRSA, is alone estimated to
kill around 19,000 people every year in the United States - far
more than HIV and AIDS - and a similar number in Europe.
And others are spreading. Cases of totally drug resistant
tuberculosis have appeared in recent years and a new wave of
"super superbugs" with a mutation called NDM 1, which first
emerged in India, has now turned up all over the world, from
Britain to New Zealand.
Last year the WHO said untreatable superbug strains of gonorrhea
were spreading across the world.
Laura Piddock, a professor of microbiology at Birmingham
University and director of the campaign group Antibiotic Action,
welcomed Davies' efforts to raise awareness of the problem.
"There are an increasing number of infections for which there
are virtually no therapeutic options, and we desperately need
new discovery, research and development," she said.
Davies called on governments and organizations across the world,
including the World Health Organization and the G8, to take the
threat seriously and work to encourage more innovation and
investment into the development of antibiotics.
"Over the past two decades there has been a discovery void
around antibiotics, meaning diseases have evolved faster than
the drugs to treat them," she said.
Davies called for more cooperation between the healthcare and
pharmaceutical industries to preserve the existing arsenal of
antibiotics, and more focus on developing new ones.
Increasing surveillance to keep track of drug-resistant
superbugs, prescribing fewer antibiotics and making sure they
are only prescribed when needed, and ensuring better hygiene to
keep infections to a minimum were equally important, she said.
Nigel Brown, president of the Society for General Microbiology,
agreed the issues demanded urgent action and said its members
would work hard to better understand infectious diseases, reduce
transmission of antibiotic resistance, and help develop new
antibiotics.
"The techniques of microbiology and new developments such as
synthetic biology will be crucial in achieving this," he said.
© Thomson Reuters 2013 All rights reserved
Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmaxhealth.com/Health-News/antibiotic-resistance-threat-superbugs-MRSA/2013/03/11/id/494055?s=al&promo_code=12BE0-1#ixzz2NFz6esch Alert: What Is Your Risk for a Heart Attack? Find Out Now |