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How to Fight Antibiotic Resistance

Taking Antibiotics

Health officials around the world agree: the superbug crisis has reached the “red alert” stage.

Since the 1940s, antibiotics have dramatically reduced illness and death from infectious diseases; penicillin alone has saved about 500 million lives. But thanks to overuse in humans and animals, antibiotics are losing their power to fight bacteria.

Infections once easily treated with penicillin now require rounds and rounds of multiple antibiotics. Eventually, some bacterial strains will become untreatable, rendering C-sections, hip replacements, and chemotherapy too risky for patients.

Antibiotic resistance is very serious indeed – it directly kills 1.27 million people around the world and is indirectly responsible for 4.95 million deaths. Without action, it will only worsen.

What Can Be Done?

Health officials’ top priority is developing new antibiotics. In 2016, 193 countries signed a United Nations declaration to encourage drug research. “We need governments, the pharmaceutical industry, health professionals, and the agricultural sector to follow through on their commitments to save modern medicine,” said England’s chief medical officer.

However, developing new antibiotics is a long, slow, and expensive process. It can take 10 years to bring a new drug to market and 23 years for the investment to start paying off. The world can’t afford to wait.

In the meantime, governments, employers, and individuals can take immediate action through a two-pronged strategy:

  1. Halting antibiotic overuse in both humans and livestock.
  2. Preventing infections before they require treatment.

Strategy 1: Stopping Antibiotic Overuse

1. Reducing Unwarranted Human Prescriptions

Antibiotics are ineffective against viral infections like colds, coughs, bronchitis, the flu, and many sinus or ear infections. Yet doctors routinely prescribe them due to habit or patient demand. In the United States, over 30% of oral antibiotic prescriptions — roughly 47 million per year — are unwarranted, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Worldwide health authorities are taking action:

2. Curbing Overuse in Livestock

Another crucial battleground is livestock. Two-thirds of antibiotics in the EU and 70% in the U.S. are given to healthy farm animals to promote growth or prevent disease in crowded conditions.

Resistant bacteria easily transfer to humans through farmworkers, raw meat handling, or contaminated water runoff. While the U.S. has enacted rules to limit agricultural use, loop-holes remain.

Consumers and corporate buyers are helping fill the gap:

Strategy 2: Preventing Infections That Require Treatment

Preventing infections directly reduces the demand for antibiotics, whether for actual bacterial illnesses or viral cases incorrectly treated with drugs.

Key preventative measures include:

  • Increasing Vaccination Rates: Flu infections leave individuals vulnerable to secondary superbug infections. Yet U.S. adult flu vaccination rates hover below 47%, with similarly dismal rates in Europe.
  • Improving Hand Hygiene: 70% of adults admit to skipping soap in public restrooms. Proper handwashing with soap and warm water for 20 seconds is vital after coughing, sneezing, gardening, or contacting animals and sick individuals.
  • Cleaning Indoor Air: Handwashing alone cannot stop airborne pathogens. Influenza viruses spread via airborne particles carrying 8.8 times more virus than surface particles.

Technologies like Novaerus NanoStrike technology make it cost-effective for employers, schools, and healthcare facilities to cleanse indoor environments. WellAir disinfection solutions continuously remove airborne pathogens to stop infection cycles at the source.

While superbugs won't be vanquished overnight, implementing these practical controls gives us the tools to prevent their spread.