When I was at the store recently I noticed an over-abundance of items that were coated, embedded or integrated with anti-biotics. Things like hand soap, cutting boards, hair combs, etc. are all being pushed on the public. These things are unnecessary and causing the proliferation of "super bugs". These infections are resistant to the treatments hospitals and doctors usually give that, in the past, could cure you. But, the more sterile you try to make your world the more potent the inhabitants of that world must become.in order to survive!
'Greatest threat to human health'
Experts are warning of a not-too-distant future where life-saving medical interventions will be too risky to undertake; a future where chemotherapy is impossible and organ transplants are no longer an option.
They say this would happen in a world without effective antibiotics, and they are calling for more public awareness of the problem of rising antimicrobial resistance.
"Basically without antibiotics those patients can't be saved, we can't do those sorts of therapies," said Dr John Ferguson, Director of Infection Prevention and Control for Hunter New England Health.
They point to the "over-giving" and broadscale use of antibiotics in the community, a practise which has the effect of unnecessarily speeding up the ability of bacteria to evolve their defences.
The proof was in the rising number of infections treated in hospitals in which the first, second and even the third-option antibiotic was no longer effective, and studies which show the circulation of newly resistant bacteria in the community.
Antibiotics also kill off the body's friendly bacteria, or "gut flora", creating an opportunity for re-colonisation with more resistant bacterial strains.
"We need to make people understand that this is part of your body, in fact you carry around 1.5 kilograms of bacteria and they are very important," Prof Cars said.
"The more antibiotics you use, necessary or unnecessary, the more you select your own flora towards a more resistant population - so when you get infections they become more and more difficult to treat."
Studies have shown it can take months, or even years, for a person's gut flora to return to the state before a course of antibiotics.
Prof Cars advised: "Save your own bacteria... you should be friends with them. We have to save these precious drugs for the very ill."
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