Growing Resistance
The rise of drug-resistant bacteria represents a huge health risk. Few new antibiotics have been developed for years, and the world's existing arsenal is growing less effective as bacteria become more resistant.
Unnecessary over-prescribing of antibiotics has helped drive this resistance, and Lord O'Neill's latest report says the medical profession has been slow to embrace the use of diagnostic testing before antibiotics are prescribed. Most prescriptions are still based on so-called ‘empirical’ diagnosis: doctors use their expertise, intuition and professional judgement to ‘guess’ whether an infection is present and what is likely to be causing it. The way bacterial infections are diagnosed has seen minimal improvement since the 1940s.
"For far too long we haven't recognised the huge cost to society of increasing resistance when we use antibiotics that we don’t need - such as antibiotics for flu which have no effect except to increase the chances of superbugs developing," says Lord O'Neill, an economist and government minister.
"To avoid the tragedy of 10 million people dying every year by 2050, the world needs rapid diagnostics to improve our use of antibiotics. They are essential to get patients the right treatment, cut down on the huge amount of unnecessary use, and make our drugs last for longer.