Many diseases ‘will soon be untreatable’

SUPERBUGS that cause sepsis, pneumonia, and salmonella will soon be resistant to antibiotics, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned as it called on governments to stop relying on pharmaceutical companies to solve the crisis.

Health officials have drawn up a list of 12 types of bacteria that pose the “greatest threat to human health” because soon no drugs will be able to fight them off. Experts have previously warned that resistance to the drugs used to fight infections could cause a bigger threat to mankind than cancer.

If antibiotics lose their effectiveness, key medical procedures – including organ transplantation, Caesarean sections and chemotherapy – could become too dangerous to perform. Around 700,000 people around the world die annually due to drug-resistant infections and, if no action is taken, it has been estimated that such infections will kill 10 million people a year by 2050.

The bacteria on the list can cause severe and often deadly infections and the most critical group includes multi-drug resistant bacteria that pose a particular threat in hospitals and nursing homes. (© Daily Telegraph, London)