Emerging Health Emergencies: Antimicrobial Resistance

The reach of antibiotics in treatment is cannot be quantified. Antibiotics as well as other antimicrobial agents speedily became the mainstay of modern medicine; being used in the treatment a numerous communicable and non communicable diseases such as of Tuberculosis, Chlamydia and countless other clinical interventions, facilitating and enabling safe treatment in these interventions.

In fact, infections such as syphilis, formerly treated with arsenic compounds, became more safely treated with penicillin.

What is antimicrobial resistance? 

According to the WHO "Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites change over time and no longer respond to medicines making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death".

As a result of drug resistance, antibiotics and other antimicrobial medicines become ineffective and infections become increasingly difficult or impossible to treat.

Why is antimicrobial resistance a global concern?

The emergence and spread of drug-resistant pathogens that have acquired new resistance mechanisms, leading to antimicrobial resistance, continues to threaten our ability to treat common infections. Especially alarming is the rapid global spread of multi- and pan-resistant bacteria (also known as “superbugs”) that cause infections that are not treatable with existing antimicrobial medicines such as antibiotics.

Antibiotics are becoming increasingly ineffective as drug-resistance spreads globally leading to more difficult to treat infections and death. New antibacterials are urgently needed – for example, to treat carbapenem-resistant gram-negative bacterial infections as identified in the WHO priority pathogen list. However, if people do not change the way antibiotics are used now, these new antibiotics will suffer the same fate as the current ones and become ineffective.

The cost of AMR to national economies and their health systems is significant as it affects productivity of patients or their caretakers through prolonged hospital stays and the need for more expensive and intensive care.  

Without effective tools for the prevention and adequate treatment of drug-resistant infections and improved access to existing and new quality-assured antimicrobials, the number of people for whom treatment is failing or who die of infections will increase. Medical procedures, such as surgery, including caesarean sections or hip replacements, cancer chemotherapy, and organ transplantation, will become more risky.

What can be done?

The spread of resistance to antimicrobial agents can be managed to some extent by behavioural modification, such as improved prescribing practices and the reduction of unnecessary antimicrobial dispensing and use. Also. better adherence to treatment regimens, stronger controls of counterfeit and substandard medicines, the avoidance of over-commercialization and broadening patient education and awareness are all vital factors.

Nonetheless, these measures, on their own, are insufficient to tackle the challenge in its entirety. The development of resistance by microbes is a natural phenomenon, and the development of resistance by bacterium, protozoa, viruses, and other microbes was inevitable. Thus, it is vital to understand that the global health concern of antimicrobial resistance is both scientific and economic.