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https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/may/13/superbugs-antibiotics-drugs-antimicrobial-resistance-infections-pandemics-sally-davies>
"The Covid-19 pandemic will “look minor” compared with what humanity faces from
the growing number of superbugs resistant to current drugs, Prof Dame Sally
Davies, England’s former chief medical officer, has warned.
Davies, who is now the UK’s special envoy on antimicrobial resistance (AMR),
lost her goddaughter two years ago to an infection that could not be treated.
She paints a bleak picture of what could happen if the world fails to tackle
the problem within the next decade, warning that the issue is “more acute” than
climate change. Drug-resistant infections already kill at least 1.2 million
people a year.
“It looks like a lot of people with untreatable infections, and we would have
to move to isolating people who were untreatable in order not to infect their
families and communities. So it’s a really disastrous picture. It would make
some of Covid look minor,” said Davies, who is also the first female master of
Trinity College, Cambridge.
AMR means that some infections caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites
can no longer be treated with available medicines. Exposure to drugs allows the
bugs to evolve the ability to resist them, and overuse of drugs such as
antibiotics accelerates that process.
Widespread resistance would make much of modern medicine too risky, affecting
treatments including caesarean sections, cancer interventions and organ
transplantation.
“If we haven’t made good strides in the next 10 years, then I’m really scared,”
Davies said.
Without the development of new treatments “it’ll grind on for decades and it
won’t burn out. We know that with viruses, they burn out, you generally develop
herd immunity, but this isn’t like that.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
