Antibiotics are not automatic! We know the song. Since this information campaign launched in France in 2002, since repeated in different forms with more or less intensity, everyone knows that we must not abuse these bacteria-killing medications prescribed in the event of infection. Because the bacteria, the good ones, which protect us or contribute to the proper functioning of our body, like the harmful ones, which attack it, adapt and evolve to protect themselves from possible threats. Thus, the more an antibiotic is used, the more quickly the microorganisms it is intended to kill or block develop countermeasures that reduce its effectiveness. This is “antibiotic resistance”.
Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers “Against antibiotic resistance, public research and production of medicines are essential”
Read later
Identified from the mid-20th centurye century, barely the first antibiotics were discovered, antibiotic resistance began to be perceived as a public health problem towards the end of the 1990s. New antibiotics marketed to respond to this arms race with bacteria were rare. Confidence in scientific progress to overcome infections was undermined as desperate cases appeared that hospital teams were unable to treat.
-The emergency has become global, bacteria having no borders, and transdisciplinary, human health and animal health being affected by the same deleterious effects of overconsumption of antibiotics. Pneumococci, staphylococci, enterobacteria, tuberculosis bacillus… In community medicine as well as in hospitals, in rich countries as well as in those with low or middle income, the resistance of germs to antibiotics has multiplied, leading to infections that are more difficult to treat, with, for the most serious cases, increased mortality.
You have 89.59% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
Health