Efforts must be made to develop new antibiotics, England’s Chief Medical Officer says

Mar 11, 2013 07:05 GMT  ·  By
Antibiotic resistant infectious diseases are a catastrophic threat to public health worldwide, specialists say
   Antibiotic resistant infectious diseases are a catastrophic threat to public health worldwide, specialists say

This March 11, England's Department of Health warned that, all things considered, antibiotic resistant superbugs constitute a “catastrophic threat” to public health worldwide.

As the country's Chief Medical Officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies explains, the main problem is that, whereas new antibiotic resistant infectious diseases are now pinned down on an almost yearly basis, the medical community has thus far failed to roll out as many new drugs as needed in order to sort out such issues.

England's CMO is convinced that, should things continue to unfold in this manner, the simplest of surgeries might translate into an individual's dying because of their contracting one such infectious disease while in the hospital.

These warnings are thoroughly explained in the CMO's latest report on public health, which focuses on the risks posed by antibiotic resistant infectious diseases and on the need to tackle these threats as soon as possible.

“Calling for politicians to treat the threat as seriously as MRSA, the report highlights a 'discovery void' with few new antibiotics developed in the past two decades,” reads the official website for England's Department of Health.

Furthermore, “It highlights that, while a new infectious disease has been discovered nearly every year over the past 30 years, there have been very few new antibiotics developed leaving our armoury nearly empty as diseases evolve and become resistant to existing drugs.”

As far as the country's CMO is concerned, dealing with this threat to public health requires a tad more than just investing time and money in the development of new antibiotics.

Thus, efforts need be made to build up people's resistance to such infectious diseases by making sure that doctors prescribe antibiotics only when needed and in fairly limited amounts.

“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. And routine operations like hip replacements or organ transplants could be deadly because of the risk of infection.”

“That’s why governments and organizations across the world, including the World Health Organization and G8, need to take this seriously,” Professor Dame Sally Davies said.