Antibiotic Resistant Superbugs Could Push Science Back to 19th Century, Expert Warns

Britian's top health official said Monday antibiotic resistance poses a catastrophic threat to medicine, with the potential to push medicine back to the 19^th century, according to a report.

Sally Davies, the chief medical officer for England, said a global effort is needed to fight antibiotic or antimicrobial resistance, according to a report released by the UK Department of Health. Since the invention of Penicillin by Alexander Fleming in the twentieth century, people having been taking all sorts of antibiotics to fight off anything from tuberculosis, salmonella to even the common cold.

Antibiotic resistance poses a catastrophic threat to medicine and could mean patients having minor surgery risk dying from infections that can no longer be treated, Davies said.

The fear is that in the past few decades, only a handful of new antibiotics have been developed and put on the market while bacterial infections continue to evolve into 'superbugs' resistant to treatment.

Davies warned that if nothing is done to reverse the situation Britain would face an apocalyptic scenario with "a health system not dissimilar from the 19th century."

Antibiotics are used to treat infections caused by bacteria. Bacteria are microscopic organisms, some of which may cause illness.

Bacterial infections evolve into 'superbugs' like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria (MRSA) which are already resistant to obtainable drugs. Only a few antibiotics have been discovered in the last few decades. MRSA is estimated to have killed 19,000 people every year in the US and a similar number in Europe, far more than HIV and AIDS, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The World Health Organization estimates antibiotic-resistant infections cost the European Union $2 billion and the US some $30 billion a year.