Antibiotics are not as effective as we think

OUR obsession with antibiotics is driving us to take them when we don’t need to, wasting 20 million tonnes of medicine and putting us at serious risk.

Antibiotic resistance expert Professor Chris Del Mar said only five in 100 people benefited from antibiotics.

The lack of new antibiotics coupled with their over-prescription has led to bacteria becoming increasingly resistant, leaving the medicine less effective and putting people at greater risk of dying from common infections.

Antibiotic resistance is said to be one of the biggest threats to human health today.

“Antibiotics aren’t nearly as effective as people think,” the Bond University academic said.

“It’s unbelievable. That (20 tonnes) is an important figure.”

The practising GP spends a lot of his time talking patients out of antibiotics that will hardly improve their symptoms and instead put them at risk of nasty side effects.

Dr Del Mar said people liked to think that antibiotics reduced their infection in three days. The reality is, for cases like middle ear infection, it is 2.5 days.

“It only shortens it by half a day,” he said.

“Most people think it’s got a much bigger effectiveness.”

Dr Del Mar, who heads up the Centre for Research Excellence on Minimising Antibiotic Resistance in the Community, said the problem was GPs prescribing outside the guidelines.

“We need to conserve antibiotics for when it can really make a difference,” he said.