Can an antibiotic still help save us?

THE rise of antibiotic-resistant ‘superbugs’ is an increasingly serious threat. If not addressed, by 2050 it is thought they could kill more people than cancer.

looks at what we need to do to combat them.

Antibiotics save lives daily, but the enemy is fighting back. Over time, bacteria have evolved, becoming familiar with our arsenal of antibiotics and resulting in the so-called ‘superbugs’.

Alarmingly, every time a bug stands firm against a strain – antimicrobial resistance (AMR) – we’re nearer to running out of ways to stop them, a war we are in danger of losing, says Public Health England.

It warns that, unless we do something about antimicrobial resistance, routine surgery, caesarean sections and some cancer treatments risk becoming lifethreatening for more than three million patients a year.

“The evidence is clear that without swift action we are at risk of putting medicine back to an age where procedures we take for granted could become too dangerous to perform,” said Professor Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer for England. Cases of E.coli and klebsiella have increased by two-thirds in recent years, making them the most frequent cause of hospital-acquired infection in Britain.

And Australian researchers have found evidence superbugs are growing resistant to alcohol hand sanitisers – an integral part of slashing rates of superbugs such as MRSA. be a life or death lottery.” Between 2013 and 2017, antibiotic-resistant bloodstream infections rose by 35%. Gonorrhoea diagnoses leaped by 22% 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.

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.