7 Reasons Why Antibiotic Drug Resistance Is Becoming A Major Problem Around The World

The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a warning saying that antibiotic resistance has reached dangerous levels globally. Why is this a problem? Well, if bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, the drugs become ineffective against bacterial infections. The smallest infections then become the deadliest killers because the antibiotic drugs are powerless to fight them.

"The rise of antibiotic resistance is a global health crisis. More and more governments recognise (it as) one of the greatest threats to health today," said Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the WHO. She warned that if left unchecked, drug resistance "will mean the end of modern medicine as we know it."

Here are the major reasons why antibiotic resistance is increasing.

1. 64% of people surveyed across 12 countries were not aware that antibiotics cannot fight colds and flus.

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The study published by the WHO found that 64% of people are under the false impression that they should take antibiotics when they have a cold or flu. What they don¡¯t realise is that antibiotics only fight bacteria and not viruses. Colds and flus are caused by viral infections, and so taking antibiotics makes no difference whatsoever.

2. One-third said they stop taking antibiotics once they start feeling better.

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Doctors usually prescribe antibiotics for a course of 3 days, 5 days, 10 days, etc. They don¡¯t do this randomly; there is a good reason for it. Every antibiotic takes a certain number of days to kill the bacterial infection entirely. If you take the medicine for a day or two and then stop taking it, all the bacteria may not get wiped out and the strains that remain get a chance to mutate and develop resistance to that particular antibiotic.

3. Doctors have a tendency to over-prescribe antibiotics.

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The WHO urges doctors to be more restrictive in their prescriptions of antibiotics, recommending that they only prescribe them to patients who genuinely need them. "Doctors need to treat antibiotics as a precious commodity," said Chan.

4. People buy antibiotics from dubious sources like the internet and hawkers.

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The WHO¡¯s survey found that 5% of the Chinese respondents who had taken antibiotics in the last 6 months had bought them online while 5% of the respondents in Nigeria had purchased them from stalls and hawkers. In Russia, only 56% of the people had purchased antibiotics with a prescription.

5. People pop antibiotics at the drop of a hat.

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Most of us are too busy to be sick and don¡¯t have the patience to wait out the illness or try home remedies. So, what do we do? We start popping pills as soon as we fall sick. Due to overuse of antibiotics, the bacteria get a chance to mutate themselves so that the antibiotic is no longer a threat to them.

6. Many people self-medicate, taking antibiotics without medical advice.

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You probably have a supply of standard antibiotics at home, which you take when you are unwell. How do you decide what to take? You take the same pills that your doctor had given you the last time you were sick, or the pills that were given to a friend or family member when they were unwell. These are not necessarily the pills that you should be taking for your current illness and once again the bacteria in your system get a chance to multiply and mutate.

7. Even if you do go to the doctor, the prescription may not be ideal.

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Doctors often have to diagnose health conditions without complete information and so they end up prescribing broad-spectrum antibiotics that can combat a number of infections, rather than specific antibiotics that will eradicate a specific type of bacteria.