The risk of total antibiotic resistance should be treated as a natural disaster like bush fires or floods. Photo by AAP Image/David Crosling
It's official. Humanity is racing towards a post-antibiotic era, a time when today's life-saving drugs won't successfully treat common infectious diseases or even infections from minor injuries.
According to the World Health Organisation, many bacteria responsible for common but serious diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhoea, gonorrhoea and bloodstream infections have developed resistance to antibiotics designed to wipe them out. Worse, few replacement treatments are in the pipeline. The post-antibiotic world looms.
Surprisingly, microbiologist Maurizio Labbate was delighted by the alarming WHO report. "It highlights exactly what we've been saying," says the researcher from the ithree institute at the University of Technology, Sydney.
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