WHO Warns Antibiotics are Becoming Useless
The World Health Organization (WHO) issued a report Wednesday that details how the world is fast approaching a dangerous time where current antibiotics will be of little use in treating a whole host of bacterial, viral, and fungal infections.
According to the report, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is becoming increasingly prevalent among populations of dangerous microbial, making infections more and more difficult to treat.
"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 21st Century," according to the report.
WHO officials and other world experts agree that this approaching threat of a post-antibiotic era is largely due to overuse and misuse of the world's current supply of antibiotics. Constant application of the drugs, even when unnecessary, has given harmful microbes countless instances of exposure to antibiotics, so that they can better adapt to the drugs and develop resistances.
The report primarily focused on investigating the resistance profiles of seven bacteria that are responsible for common but serious diseases. These include causes of urinary tract infection, gonorrhea, diarrhea, blood infection such as sepsis, and -- of course -- pneumonia.
What they found was alarming, findings that primary treatments for a number of life-threatening infections are already not effective in at least 50 percent of the world's patients.
"The results are cause for high concern, documenting resistance to antibiotics, especially 'last resort' antibiotics, in all regions of the world," the agency said in a news release outlining the findings.
This only adds to growing fears after the WHO reported back in March that a highly multidrug-resistant strain of tuberculosis was sweeping across a number of third-world countries, prompting the emergency release of experimental treatment options in order to buy the world some time.
This latest WHO report, Antimicrobial resistance: global report on surveillance 2014, was published on April 30.
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