The use of antibiotics increases day by day worldwide,
overuse is one of the
factors that contributes towards the growing number of bacterial
infections which are becoming resistant to antibacterial medications.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,overuse in
the USA is a problem particular in Southeast. According to the European
Centre for Disease Prevention and Control antibiotic resistance
continues to be a serious public health
threat worldwide. In a statement issued in 19th November 2012, the ECDC
informed that 25,000 people die each year due to antibiotic-resistant
bacterial infections. New ECDC data has shown that there has been a
considerable increase
over the last four years of combined resistance to multiple antibiotics
in E. coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae in over one third
of EU and EEA (European Economic Area) nations. Consumption of
carbapenems, a major class of last-line antibiotics, increased
significantly from 2007 to 2010. "Then there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose
himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the
drug, make them resistant," said Alexander Fleming, speaking in his
Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1945.
As predicted almost 70 years ago by the man who discovered the first
antibiotic, drug resistance is upon us.
