Humans have always battled bacteria, but the development of antibiotics in the 1930s and 40s gave us an advantage over the insects that killed us. Suddenly, we became superhuman. Before that, unless you had surgery, the mortality rate was 100% for bacterial meningitis, 30% for pneumonia, and 100% for appendicitis.
Antibiotics allow us to do things that no one in history has ever dreamed of. They allowed us to get organ transplants, chemotherapy, and intensive K-units when we were very sick. None of these advances in human medicine would have been possible without antibiotics.
We still have an upper limit, and antibiotics are clearly still working, but what worries scientists is the rate of change. This wasn’t an issue 20 years ago, it is today. Infectious diseases kill more people than cancer. 5000 people die from tuberculosis every day. So if we don’t act soon, we could be in serious trouble within another 20 years.
As bacteria keep fighting back, we deploy our antibiotic defenses broadly. They have adapted and evolved. Now even our last and most valuable antibiotic is succumbing to the rise of superbugs.
We now know that people who return from abroad after routine surgery can get superbugs in their blood. With a billion people traveling the world every year, bacteria are more mobile than ever, and so are superbugs. They are created when we misuse antibiotics, which we do all over the world. Every time we take antibiotics, we give bugs a chance to become super bugs. When more of us take antibiotics inappropriately, the chances of superbugs appearing increase.
Australia ranks seventh in the world for antibiotic overuse per capita. Australia is like many other developed countries. They saw development and wealth as synonymous with the ability to use antibiotics, and when they realized that many bacteria did not respond to antibiotics, they lost their plans.
As it turns out, the Indian subcontinent is the perfect petri dish for superbugs. Misuse of antibiotics is widespread there and there is no antibiotic policy. Antibiotics are produced in large quantities in India and sold at low prices, and these drugs are available over the counter. Water and even soil are polluted with waste from antibiotic production. In addition to poor sanitation and chronic overcrowding, it’s also a fertile ground for antibiotic resistance.
There is a general principle in treating infections. The more we use antibiotics, the faster bacteria develop resistance to them. So if we have a situation where antibiotics are used in agriculture, they can be bought over the counter, and hospitals have little control over antibiotic use, obviously resistance will spread faster in that environment.
