What is worse than anti-vax? #antimicrobialresistance
Drug resistant bacteria is a real threat to health
As bad as it is to not vaccinate against illnesses that may be life-threatening to children and immunocompromised individuals, it is even worse that multi-drug resistant bacteria are emerging around the world, and you may be contributing without even knowing!
But: You can help stop drug-resistant bacteria
Bacteria are likely to develop resistance to antibiotics if the antibiotics do no wipe out the bacteria right away. That means that over-use and misinformed use of antibiotics is contributing every day to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. These dangerous activities include:
- Regular use of antibiotics in agriculture as a preventative measure instead of fighting specific infections
- Wrongly prescribing antibiotics, e.g. using antibiotics does not help treat a viral infection, and for bacterial infections the antibiotics must be of the kind that is effective against the target bacteria
- Individuals correctly prescribed antibiotics to treat a bacterial infection may make the misinformed mistake of stopping the antibiotic treatment early, giving the still present bacteria the opportunity to develop resistance.
All of the above are activities that can easily be corrected by education and information of both general practitioners, agricultural workers and the general public.
What cannot easily be corrected is the scenario where one day multi-resistant bacteria are causing a world-wide epidemic of drug-resistant infections — with no available treatment!
(If you cannot imagine what that future would be like, have a read of these Infectious Futures published by Nesta)
You can be an Antibiotic Guardian
Please think about best practices for using antibiotics and help spread the word in this week which is antimicrobial resistance awareness week. You can read more about antimicrobial resistance (AMR) on the NHS website and you can pledge to be an Antibiotic Guardian via this website by Public Health England, and you can watch and share the video below with your friends and family.
Thanks.
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In my day job I run a charity (DNAdigest) and a company (Repositive) which have nothing to do with antibiotics, but all to do about making efficient use of research data to have the most positive impact for research in health and disease.
Originally published at www.linkedin.com.
