Answers to Antimicrobial Resistance...

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.