WHO warns that crisis could be worse than Aids

Deaths from cuts and grazes, diarrhoea and flu will soon be common as antibiotics lose their power to fight minor infections, experts have warned.

The World Health Organisation says the problem has been caused by antibiotics being so widely prescribed that bacteria have begun to evolve and develop resistance.

It claims the crisis is worse than the Aids epidemic – which has caused 25million deaths worldwide – and threatens to turn the clock back on modern medicine.

The WHO warns that the public should ‘anticipate many more deaths’ as it may become routine for children to develop lethal infections from minor grazes, while hospital operations become deadly as patients are at risk of developing infections that were previously treatable.

Doctors are increasingly finding that antibiotics no longer work against urinary and skin infections, tuberculosis and gonorrhoea.

The WHO is urging the public to take simple precautions, such as washing hands to prevent bacteria from spreading in the first place.

Doctors are also being told to prescribe antibiotics sparingly and ensure patients finish the full course, as if they stop mid-way the bacteria may become resistant. In England last year some 41.7million prescriptions were written out, up from 37.2million in 2006.

Dr Keiji Fukuda, the WHO’s assistant director for health security, said: ‘Without urgent, co-ordinated action, the world is headed for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries which have been treatable for decades can once again kill.

‘Effective antibiotics have been one of the pillars allowing us to live longer, live healthier, and benefit from modern medicine.

‘Unless we take significant actions to improve efforts to prevent infections, and also change how we produce, prescribe and use antibiotics, the world will lose more and more of these global public health goods and the implications will be devastating.

‘We should anticipate to see many more deaths.

‘We are going to see people who have untreatable infections.’

Only last month, Britain’s chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies criticised GPs for needlessly ‘dishing out’ antibiotics to patients.

In the largest study of its kind, the WHO looked at data from 114 countries on seven major types of bacteria. Experts are particularly concerned about bacteria responsible for pneumonia, urinary tract infections, skin infections, diarrhoea and gonorrhoea.

They are also worried that antiviral medicines are becoming increasingly less effective against flu.

Dr Danilo Lo Fo Wong, a senior adviser at the WHO, said: ‘A child falling off their bike and developing a fatal infection would be a freak occurrence in the UK, but that is where we are heading.’

British experts likened the problem to the Aids epidemic of the 1980s. Professor Laura Piddock, who specialises in microbiology at the University of Birmingham, said: ‘The world needs to respond as it did to the Aids crisis.

‘We still need a better understanding of all aspects of resistance as well as new discovery, research and development of new antibiotics.’

The first antibiotic, penicillin, was developed by Sir Alexander Fleming in 1929. But their use has soared since the 1960s, and in 1998 the Government issued guidelines to doctors urging them to curb prescriptions. Nonetheless, surveys suggest they are still prescribed for 80 per cent of coughs, colds and sore throats.

Jennifer Cohn of the international medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières agreed with the WHO’s assessment and confirmed the problem had spread to many corners of the world.

‘We see horrendous rates of antibiotic resistance wherever we look in our field operations, including children admitted to nutritional centres in Niger, and people in our surgical and trauma units in Syria,’ she said.

Earlier this month, Government body NICE said that one in 16 patients are developing infections on NHS wards because of poor hygiene among staff.

NICE said 800 patients a day, the equivalent of 300,000 a year, are infected by a member of staff or by dirty equipment. It is estimated the infections cause 5,000 deaths annually and contribute to another 15,000.

Written by Sophie Borland for The Daily Mail, May 1, 2014.

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