Imagine that, five years from now, you
contract a deadly disease. There are
over 160 different types of antibiotics, but your body has developed resistance
to them all from repeated prescription and use. With no other cure available what do you do?
This isn’t an unrealistic image; although
society is generally aware of the dangers of over use of antibiotics, there is
a level of naïvity about the looming crisis of Antimicrobial resistance.
We are a society of overconsumption, in our
eating, drinking and spending. Likewise, we have over consumed on antibiotics. A confronting
statistic that puts our overuse into perspective can be seen that fourty-seven years
ago we only needed 40,00 units of penicillin to cure pneumonia, today, we need 24 million units.
Antimicrobial
resistance (AMR), it is the ability of microorganisms (bacteria, viruses and
parasites) to prevent antibiotics from working against it. AMR causes antibiotics
that once worked, to become ineffective.
This allows infections, diseases and other illnesses to persist and continue to
spread.
There are three main ways to try and turn this problem around:
1.
Firstly, antibiotic control programs can be
run in hospitals. These programs involve education on the issue, alternative
treatment guides, and mandatory approval for the use of restricted antibiotics.
2.
Secondly, the uses of computer-based
programs, which sift through large amounts of information on a patient,
to calculate whether antibiotic are necessary.
3.
Finally the most simple and yet high effective method
is hygiene; washing
of hands to stop the spread of infection and the need to use antibiotics.
These
are not very onerous steps that will stop the rise of AMR. As a society we
should be taking steps like these for the better good and with an eye on the
long term rather than the immediate convenient short term.
