Superbugs ‘could kill us before climate change does’

ANTIMICROBIAL resistance could soon kill at least 10million people per year and wipe out humanity “before climate change does”, England’s chief medical officer has warned.

Prof Dame Sally Davies also cautioned a post-brexit UK against importing meat or fish from countries that “misuse” antibiotics to rear livestock.

Overuse of antibiotics in medicine and agriculture leads to bugs no longer responding to the drugs in medical situations. If these antibiotics stop working, a minor infection could prove fatal.

Dame Sally, who leaves her post at the end of September after nine years, told Sky News: “We humans are doing it to ourselves, but it could kill us before climate change does. It is a very important area and we are underinvesting in sorting it out. Antibiotics underpin modern medicine.

“At least 10 million could die every year if we don’t get on top of this.”

Government data show that, since 2014, the UK has cut its antibiotics use by more than 7 per cent and sales of antibiotics for use in food-producing animals have fallen by 40 per cent.

But the number of drug-resistant bloodstream infections increased by 35 per cent between 2013 and 2017.

Asked about post-brexit trade deals, Dame Sally said: “There’s always a balance in a trade relationship between economics and standards, and this Government has [committed] to translate the European law ... and stick to the standards we have, so it should all be all right.”

She argued that the UK “should not be importing beef or other animals where antibiotics have been misused and growth promotion is a misuse, in my book, because it leads to problems across the world”.

Some strains of tuberculosis, MRSA and Clostridium difficile no longer respond to antibiotics. There has also been a rise in “superbugs” resistant to not just one antibiotic but several or all of them.

Dame Sally is to take up a role as special envoy on antimicrobial resistance.