Health & Medicine
Catastrophic Antibiotic Threat: Superbug MRSA Estimated to Kill 19,000 People in U.S. Every Year (VIDEO)
Kathleen Lees
First Posted: Mar 11, 2013 11:16 AM EDT
A growing resistance to antibiotics shows that patients having minor surgery risk dying from infections that may no longer be treatable with such medications.
Sally Davies, the chief medical officer for England, said global action is needed to fight antibiotic, or antimicrobial, resistance and fill a drug "discovery void" by researching and developing new medicines to treat emerging, mutating infections, according to the Daily News.
The number of antibiotics developed and available over the years have been limited, yet growing bacterial infections increasingly evolve into "superbugs" that may be resistant to the drugs.
"Antimicrobial resistance poses a catastrophic threat. If we don't act now, any one of us could go into hospital in 20 years for minor surgery and die because of an ordinary infection that can't be treated by antibiotics," Davies said.
"And routine operations like hip replacements or organ transplants could be deadly because of the risk of infection."
One of the best known superbugs, MRSA, is alone estimated to kill around 19,000 people every year in the United States - far more than HIV and AIDS - and a similar number in Europe.
Cases of drug resistant tuberculosis have also appeared in a new wave of "super superbugs" with a mutation called NDM 1 in India and has now spread from Britain to New Zealand.
Last year the WHO said untreatable superbug strains of gonorrhoea were spreading across the world.
Laura Piddock, a professor of microbiology at Birmingham University and director of the campaign group Antibiotic Action, welcomed Davies' efforts to raise awareness of the problem.
"There are an increasing number of infections for which there are virtually no therapeutic options, and we desperately need new discovery, research and development," she said.
Want to learn more about antiboitic resistance? Check out this video, courtesy of the Huffington Post.
See Now:
NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone
©2024 ScienceWorldReport.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The window to the world of science news.
More on SCIENCEwr
First Posted: Mar 11, 2013 11:16 AM EDT
A growing resistance to antibiotics shows that patients having minor surgery risk dying from infections that may no longer be treatable with such medications.
Sally Davies, the chief medical officer for England, said global action is needed to fight antibiotic, or antimicrobial, resistance and fill a drug "discovery void" by researching and developing new medicines to treat emerging, mutating infections, according to the Daily News.
The number of antibiotics developed and available over the years have been limited, yet growing bacterial infections increasingly evolve into "superbugs" that may be resistant to the drugs.
"Antimicrobial resistance poses a catastrophic threat. If we don't act now, any one of us could go into hospital in 20 years for minor surgery and die because of an ordinary infection that can't be treated by antibiotics," Davies said.
"And routine operations like hip replacements or organ transplants could be deadly because of the risk of infection."
One of the best known superbugs, MRSA, is alone estimated to kill around 19,000 people every year in the United States - far more than HIV and AIDS - and a similar number in Europe.
Cases of drug resistant tuberculosis have also appeared in a new wave of "super superbugs" with a mutation called NDM 1 in India and has now spread from Britain to New Zealand.
Last year the WHO said untreatable superbug strains of gonorrhoea were spreading across the world.
Laura Piddock, a professor of microbiology at Birmingham University and director of the campaign group Antibiotic Action, welcomed Davies' efforts to raise awareness of the problem.
"There are an increasing number of infections for which there are virtually no therapeutic options, and we desperately need new discovery, research and development," she said.
Want to learn more about antiboitic resistance? Check out this video, courtesy of the Huffington Post.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone