DRUG-RESISTANT GERM RISK A TIME BOMB

The UN has warned of a ticking time bomb of drugresistant germs brewing in the natural environment, aided by humans dumping antibiotics and chemicals into the water and soil. If this continues, people will be at an even higher risk of contracting diseases, incurable by existing antibiotics, from swimming in the sea

We may enter what people are calling a postantibiotic era, so we go back to the pre-1940s when simple infection will become very difficult, if not impossible to treat Will Gaze of University of Exeter

nairobi — The UN warned on Tuesday of a ticking time bomb of drug-resistant germs brewing in the natural environment, aided by humans dumping antibiotics and chemicals into the water and soil.

If this continues, people will be at an ever-higher risk of contracting diseases which are incurable by existing antibiotics from swimming in the sea or other seemingly innocuous activities, a report said.

“Around the world, discharge from municipal, agricultural and industrial waste in the environment means it is common to find antibiotic concentrations in many rivers, sediments and soils,” the study found.

“It is steadily driving the evolution of resistant bacteria,” it said. “A drug that once protected our

around the world, discharge from municipal, agricultural and industrial waste in the environment means it is common to find antibiotic concentrations in many rivers, sediments and soils

UN study

health is now in danger of very quietly destroying it.”

The report, “Frontiers 2017”, was released at the UN Environment Assembly, the highest-level gathering on matters concerning the environment. Health watchdogs are already deeply worried about the dwindling armoury of weapons against germs.

A report in 2014 warned that drug-resistant infections might kill 10 million people a year by 2050, making it the leading cause of death, over heart disease and cancer.

Bacteria acquire drug resistance partly by exposure to antibiotics.

To survive the drug onslaught, bacteria can transfer, even between different species, genes that confer immunity. They can pass these genes on to future generations, or DNA can mutate spontaneously.

Strong enough doses of antibiotics will kill disease-causing bacteria before they have a chance to mutate.

But antibiotics are generally overprescribed, often at incorrect doses, which means the germs are not killed but instead given an evolutionary boost to survive future exposure to the same drug.

“We may enter what people are calling a post-antibiotic era, so we go back to the pre-1940s when simple infection... will become very difficulty, if not impossible” to treat, Will Gaze of the University of Exeter, who co-authored the new report, told AFP.

The investigation highlighted a largely unknown and poorly researched contributor to the drugresistance problem: environmental pollution.

Today, 70 per cent to 80 per cent of all antibiotics that humans take, or give to farm animals to bulk them up and keep them healthy, find their way into the environment, partly through wastewater and manure deposits. —