DETROIT – One of the world’s leading scientists is warning of an impending apocalypse. No, not a zombie apocalypse, but rather one involving unstoppable bacteria against whom no antibiotics work. She says she is worried that our future generations will live in a world where antibiotics no longer protect them from disease.
Professor Dame Sally Davies, a scientist and Chief Medical Officer for the United Kingdom, has warned that if we don’t do something soon, our antibiotics will become useless against drug-resistant bacteria. This could lead to 10 million people dying every year from drug-resistant diseases. In the United States, at least two million people are already infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) predicts that 23,000 people die every year due to that. Globally, the number is predicted to be more than 700,000 deaths from superbugs. In the next three decades, we will reach that 10 million deaths mark if we don’t do something fast.
“We really are facing, if we don’t take action now, a dreadful post-antibiotic apocalypse,” Davies said at a conference in Berlin. “I don’t want to say to my children that I didn’t do my best to protect them and their children.” (1)
The first step to solving this problem is simply by only using antibiotics when they are absolutely necessary. This isn’t just a piece of information for doctors, however, but for patients, too. Too often, patients demand antibiotics from their doctors when they really don’t need them. Davies says that demanding patients who push doctors to prescribe antibiotics for things like the cold virus is a big part of the problem. Antibiotics don’t even work against viruses, only illnesses caused by bacterial infections. Many patients think that doctors are being mean or cheap when they refuse to prescribe these medications when, in truth, they are simply trying to save them for when they would actually make a difference.
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