"The problem is so serious that it threatens the achievements of modern medicine. A post-antibiotic era—in which common infections and minor injuries can kill—far from being an apocalyptic fantasy, is instead a very real possibility for the twenty-first century."
That's according to a 257-page warning today from the World Health Organization (WHO) about increasingly unbeatable, pervasive infectious agents. The analysis of 114 countries is the most comprehensive global look at antimicrobial resistance to date, and it found "very high" rates of resistant infections across all regions, including "alarming" rates in many parts of the world.
If there's ever an upside to panic, it's the possible inspiration of preventive action. Combing responses to this declaration of a "global health security threat," which range from one U.K. expert agreeing we've reached a "critical point" to Doctors Without Borders reporting "horrendous rates of antibiotic resistance"—in the context of this message that has been crescendoing for decades but only recently in mainstream media—a controlled panic is prudent.
To recap the threat as the WHO layed it out today: As bacteria, fungi, viruses, and parasites have grown to overcome the drugs that once killed them, so has grown the threat to global public health. When more and more standard treatments no longer work, largely due to overuse and misuse, infections become difficult (or impossible) to control. Infections will spread more widely, and the illnesses and hospital stays they induce will be longer and more likely to kill people. Specifically, WHO warns, an infection with antibiotic-resistant bacteria compared to one with antibiotic-sensitive bacteria doubles a person's risk of dying.
The World Health Organization's immediate recommendations for everyone: Use antibiotics only when prescribed, take them for the entire time they're prescribed even if you feel better, and never share them or use leftovers.
On a global scale, the WHO says surveillance of drug-resistant outbreaks "is neither coordinated nor harmonized," reporting "major gaps" and "urgent need to strengthen collaboration surveillance."
That will require, they write, "action across government sectors and society as a whole."
Also relevant, most antibiotics are used not on people, but on animals so we can eat meat that's produced cheaply. Factoring in the cost to human health—healthcare spending, lost productivity, unsettling collateral damage to our own natural microbiomes that we're only beginning to understand, and miscellaneous things like losing a friend to something as once-subdued as gonorrhea (which the WHO found now exists in 36 countries in a form that cannot be killed by any antibiotic)—it's not at all cheap.
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