Imagine a simple cold turns fatal, or minor surgeries turn life-threatening. This will be our reality if the increasing rate of antimicrobial resistance is left unchecked.
What is Antimicrobial Resistance?
Antimicrobial resistance occurs when microbes like bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites evolve to resist antimicrobials (antimicrobials are drugs used to treat infections such as antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals and antiparasitics).
It is a natural process that occurs over time through genetic changes in pathogens. This means that infections once easily treated with antimicrobials are becoming harder or even impossible to cure.
The primary cause of antimicrobial resistance is the overuse and misuse of antimicrobial agents in human medicine, agriculture and animal husbandry.
Why You Should Care About Antimicrobial Resistance?
1. Simple Infections could Become Untreatable:
Diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, and urinary tract infections are now becoming resistant to first-line treatments, forcing doctors to resort to more expensive or even toxic alternatives.
Some diseases are already showing resistance to multiple drugs, leading to greater mortality rates and increased risks of transmission.
2. Medical Procedures Depend on Effective Antibiotics:
Life-saving surgeries like organ transplants and even routine surgeries rely heavily on antibiotics to prevent infections of different grades. These procedures would become significantly riskier due to the increasing rates of antimicrobial resistance.
3. Prolong Action
Antimicrobial-resistant infections take longer to treat, leading to prolonged hospital stays, increased healthcare costs and greater financial burden on families.
4. Resistance:
As misuse of antibiotics causes antibiotic resistance in humans, its overuse in livestock also promotes resistant bacteria which can enter the food chain and infect humans.
If these resistant bacteria continue to multiply, they could ruin food production systems, leading to global food insecurity.
Imagine if a person who has misused antimicrobial agents ingests livestock products that contain antimicrobial-resistant bacteria. Terrible, right?
How Can You Prevent Antimicrobial Resistance?
1. Use antibiotics responsibly: Antibiotics should only be prescribed by a healthcare professional, and you should always complete the full course of antibiotics even if you start feeling better.
2. Practice good hygiene by washing your hands frequently, keeping up to date with vaccinations and proper cleaning and disinfection of wounds to prevent infections.
3. Maintain a healthy diet and exercise regularly to strengthen your immune system.
4. Wash your fruits and vegetables before cooking, and cook your food at the right temperature to kill harmful bacteria.
Consequences of Inaction Against Antimicrobial Resistance
1. Our failure to address antimicrobial resistance could lead us to a post-antibiotic era where infections that were once easily treatable could become deadly.
2. The economic burden of antimicrobial resistance is projected to cost the world economy billions of dollars every year.
3. Healthcare systems are already overwhelmed with tackling common infections, resistant infections would add more to their burden.
4. Although research and development of new antibiotics that can tackle resistant microbes are going on, it is a very slow and expensive process. This makes the prevention of antimicrobial resistance via the responsible use of antimicrobial agents critical in the fight against antimicrobial resistance.
Final Dose:
Antimicrobial resistance is no longer a prediction for the future, it is happening now. It could undo decades of medical progress, making minor infections deadly once again.
The fight against AMR is everyone’s responsibility, and it starts with you, so let’s start caring now. Whether through responsible antibiotic use, improved hygiene, or advocacy for stronger policies, every effort counts in preserving the effectiveness of antimicrobials and safeguarding global health.
Have you ever stopped taking antibiotics before completing the full course?
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