The supeRbugs?
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Our modern way of life also has an impact. Lethal superbugs, such as MRSA, can spread quickly in large hospitals with staff and visitors in and out, while the growth of global air travel for trade and tourism promotes the spread too.
Good hand hygiene practices have never been more essential. This has helped reduce levels of lifethreatening MRSA and C. difficile in UK hospitals but other resistant strains are now on the up.
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Sanitisers are an integral part of hospitals and, alongside a major campaign, helped slash rates of superbugs like MRSA.
But when investigating why some species of antibiotic-resistant bacteria have increased, they found bacteria are better at surviving in sterile environments.
ARE WE FACING A POSTANTIBIOTIC APOCALYPSE?
“I was accused of being a scaremonger in 2007 when I used this term,” says Prof James. “Now experts agree we face a conceivable future where, if we continue, routine surgery could be deadly and cutting your finger or having a cough could be a life or death lottery.”
Statistics speak for themselves. Between 2013 and 2017, antibioticresistant bloodstream infections rose by around 35 per cent.
Gonorrhoea diagnoses leapt by 22 per cent between 2016 and 2017, while earlier this year the first known British case of “super-gonorrhoea” was discovered after a man picked up a strain of the STI in Thailand that proved resistant to all the standard drugs.
We are decades behind in the race against superbugs. “Pharmaceutical companies have pulled out of antibiotic development, it’s not profitable enough,” says Prof James. “It costs a billion dollars to bring a drug to market yet, compared to a £300,000-a-year cancer treatment, economics don’t add up.”
“Changing the funding mechanism for pharma is a proposal,” says Prof James.
“We need a company to develop a new antibiotic for when nothing else works. But because they wouldn’t make money, they’d need to be paid irrespective of use.”
Current initiatives include small biotech companies trying to discover antibiotics and are approaching big pharma if successful. There is also research under way into alternatives, he says. “They include bacteriophages (kills bacteria from within) and my company, Novel Antibiotics, is involved in developing protein antibodies called bacteriocins (bacteria that kill other bacteria).”
What’s clear is we need to reduce the antibiotics prescribed globally. If the medical profession, pharma, agriculture and public work together there’s a greater chance of halting the march of superbugs.
“There is hope,” says Prof James, “But a lot more needs to be done.”
what can you do?
THE Government has a target to halve the inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics by 2020. And data shows there has been some progress.
But research shows that 38 per cent of people still expected an antibiotic from a surgery, NHS walk-in centre or GP out-of-hours service when they visited with flu, a cough or a throat, ear, sinus or chest infection in 2017.
“We need to preserve antibiotics for when we really need them and we are calling on the public to join us in tackling antibiotic resistance by listening to your GP, pharmacist or nurse’s advice and only taking antibiotics when necessary,” says Professor Paul Cosford, medical director at PHE.