The next five years threaten Britain with an emergency situation due to the growth of pathogens resistant to any atibiotics.
This was stated by Sally Davis, the country's main expert in the field of health. The resistance of pathogens to most antibiotics leads to the spread of infections, which in turn creates a threat to national security. The situation risks gaining the scale characteristic of such catastrophic events as a pandemic of influenza, severe flooding or large-scale terrorist attacks.
The forecast is truly "apocalyptic". Even simple surgical interventions will be deadly for most people due to complications caused by the most common infections.
Already, 80% of patients with gonorrhea can not be cured with tetracycline. The situation with growing resistance to carbapenems, antibiotics used in serious infections, is even more alarming. If in 2003 there were three cases of bacterial resistance to carbapenems, then in 2011 only in the first half of the year medical workers were faced with 217 such cases.
Since the growth of antibiotic resistance is an international problem, representatives of different countries of the world and the World Health Organization are working together to develop a unified strategy to combat this phenomenon. The corresponding document should appear in early spring.
