Global Health Alert Over Antibiotics Misuse

Antibiotics will soon become so ineffective that a sore throat or grazed knee could kill, according to a warning from the World Health Organisation.

The world is approaching a post-antibiotic era, which could bring about "the end of modern medicine as we know it", according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Dr Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organisation, is warning humans are developing such resistance to the drugs that common complaints like a sore throat or grazed knee could become potentially fatal.

She said routine operations might become too dangerous, with every antibiotic ever developed "at risk of becoming useless".

The threat was "global, extremely serious, and growing", Dr Chan said.

"A post-antibiotic era means, in effect, an end to modern medicine as we know it," she told a conference of infectious disease experts in Copenhagen.

"Things as common as strep throat or a child's scratched knee could once again kill.

"Some sophisticated interventions, like hip replacements, organ transplants, cancer chemotherapy, and care of pre-term infants, would become far more difficult or even too dangerous to undertake.

"At a time of multiple calamities in the world, we cannot allow the loss of essential antimicrobials, essential cures for many millions of people, to become the next global crisis."

Replacement treatments, she cautioned, would be more costly, more toxic and might require treatment in intensive care units.

Life-saving drugs to treat tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/Aids could also be affected.

Dr Chan said: "Among the world's 12 million cases of tuberculosis in 2010, WHO estimates that 650,000 involved multidrug-resistant TB strains.

"Treatment of MDR-TB is extremely complicated, typically requiring two years of medication with toxic and expensive medicines, some of which are in constant short supply.

"Even with the best of care, only slightly more than 50% of these patients will be cured."

She criticised the "gross misuse" of antibiotics both in humans and livestock.

She said doctors prescribing the drugs too frequently and for too long, and the greater quantities of antibiotics used in healthy animals worldwide than in unhealthy humans, was a cause for great concern.

The pipeline, in terms of developing new antibiotics, is "virtually dry", Dr Chan warned.

"The cupboard is nearly bare. Prospects for turning this situation around look dim."

But, despite the global warnings, demand for antibiotics from patients has not diminished.

A north London GP, Dr David Lloyd, told Sky News: "A lot of our patients, because of the pressures they are under in their everyday lives, feel that they need everything they can to get better as quickly as possible.

"Their employers are yelling at them to come back to work, they're feeling terrible. They want to get better as quickly as they can, and so, naturally, they think that antibiotics are going to help them get better.

"But we know that most minor infections are what we call "self-limiting" and don't get better with antibiotics."