People are not sure how Antibiotic resistance develops. Remember, it develops in the bacteria, not you. This means even if you don't use antibiotics, you can still come across a drug-resistant bacteria and get disease.
Our most precious and the best line of defense has now turned away from us. Antibiotics, that we’ve relied on for hundreds of years to kill deadly and contagious bacteria, are now set to kill around 10 million people by 2050. With doctors literally dispensing them like sweets, farmers continuously pouring them into fodder and people abusing them, antibiotics have now virtually stopped working now.
A woman expired in January due to a bacterial infection as 26 types of antibiotics failed to work on her. Although we’ve been killing bacteria for quite some time, now they are outsmarting us and are becoming much stronger.
More bad news
Other than creating more and more lethal infections, antibiotics don’t prove so good for us. Our bodies contain a balance of good bacteria and without them, we would be unable to carry out important metabolic functions.
Antibiotics act similar to a carpet bomb, neutralizing and killing all bacteria, either its good bacteria or the bad ones. It’s easy or any single person to see how this issue doesn’t concern him or her, especially when the person is not actively getting any bacterial infection.
But at some point, many among us have used an antibiotic - either to combat pneumonia, treat a UTI, or to cure an infected wound.
As antibiotic resistance is becoming an emerging concern all over the world, it’s often very difficult to make a connection between antibiotic-resistant pathogens and human beings. Dr. Elyse Seltzer said, “At the national organization level there's a clear recognition of the need for new antibiotics."
The CEO of Nabriva Therapeutics, Dr.
Colin Broom, commented that in the near future people will not be able to fight off common infections which is a big problem. He also mentioned that we have been sort of ignoring this issue just like global warming.
The majority of the pharmaceutical companies are now stopping the development of new antibiotics. Those which are presently in the developmental phase are now also facing immense stumbling blocks towards approval.
Just like the response towards climate change, a great misconception about how antibiotic resistance works and proliferates still exists.
Post-antibiotic era coming soon
76 percent of the people thought that antibiotic resistance occurred when the human body started to resist the drug, says a survey conducted by the World Health Organization in 2015. This type of thinking shows that resistance is not an issue for those who are not prescribed antibiotics. But that’s not real. In fact, it’s the opposite.
If you take too many antibiotics, there’s a high chance that the bacteria in your body are getting resistant to it. Dr. Colin Broom said, “It’s actually the bacterial infection that someone else has had which you acquire, therefore, it has nothing to do with your body.” A government organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a clear warning saying someday we’ll be in a post-antibiotic era.
