Euroviews. To safeguard modern medicine, we must tackle antimicrobial resistance before it’s too late

Everyone knows about penicillin. It is one of the most widely prescribed drugs in the world. And herein lies the problem.

Penicillin was the first antibiotic, discovered in 1928. It revolutionised healthcare. No longer did patients have to die or have their limbs amputated because of minor bacterial infections.

Millions of lives have been saved, and dozens of other antibiotic medicines have been developed since.

But we are now at a turning point. These “minor” infections are becoming life-threatening again. Many infections are becoming harder to treat, while medical procedures — such as surgery and chemotherapy — have become much riskier.

Over the past decades, many bacteria have evolved to develop resistance to antibiotics. This is a natural process that occurs over time through genetic changes in the bacteria.

However, the process is accelerated by humans through inappropriate use — like when you stop antibiotic treatment before finishing the prescribed course — and incorrect diagnosis, eg when your doctor prescribes antibiotics for a viral infection on which antibiotics have no effect.

This is called antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and it’s one of the greatest threats to public health in the world today.

Medical breakthroughs made over the past century are being reversed right before our eyes, but still, this “silent pandemic” gets very little attention outside the public health realm.

We already know that AMR is directly responsible for over 1 million deaths annually and indirectly linked to 5 million deaths globally. To put this into perspective, the health burden of antibiotic resistance is comparable to that of influenza, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS combined.

In the WHO European Region, covering 53 member states across