World faces '˜post-antibiotic apocalypse', warns health expert

Dame Sally Davies warns of the risk of overuse of antibiotics for public health

The world is facing a 'post-antibiotic apocalypse' unless global leaders take action to address the growing threat of antibiotic resistance, a leading health adviser has warned.

Dame Sally Davies, chief medical officer for England, has outlined the stark consequences of allowing antibiotics to lose their effectiveness, claiming it will spell “the end of modern medicine”.

Without the drugs used to fight infections, common medical interventions such as caesarean sections, cancer treatments and hip replacements would become incredibly “risky” and transplant medicine would be a “thing of the past”, she said. “We are facing, if we don’t take action now, a dreadful post-antibiotic apocalypse,” she said.

Health experts have previously warned that resistance to antimicrobial drugs could cause a bigger threat to mankind than cancer.

Dame Sally said the latest estimates were that about one in three or one in four prescriptions in primary care are probably not needed.

Antibiotics are used to prevent and treat bacterial infections. But antibiotic resistance takes place when the bacteria change in response to the use of these medicines.

Bacteria, not patients, become antibiotic-resistant.

Dr Andrew Buist, deputy chair of the British Medical Association’s Scottish GP committee, said: “GPs are often placed under huge pressure from patients to prescribe antibiotics even when the GP considers it’s not necessary. The public should be made aware that antibiotics are not a cure-all.”

In March Professor Alistair Leonard, the Scottish Government’s infection adviser, warned Scotland’s antibiotic use was three times the level recommended by experts to ward off a superbug crisis that could threaten modern medical procedures.

Prof Leonard also said Scottish hospitals had the highest antibiotic use in the UK.

Anas Sarwar MSP, Scottish Labour health spokesman, said: “This is a grave warning from England’s chi