Written by Kate Kelland at Reuters
Antibiotic overuse threatens modern medicine
Novemver 10, 2009
Summary: Patients don't understand that antibiotics don't do anything when it comes to viruses like colds and flu, so they demand antibiotics from their doctors. It's easier for doctors to just prescribe the meds than to take the time to educate the patients, so they prescribe them anyway. The result is the creation of suberbugs, and they are starting to become a real health issue that could effect the abiliy to perform surgery and provide neonatal care for premature babies.
Dominique Monnet of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control's (ECDC) scientific advice unit said the "whole span of modern medicine" is under threat because bugs are becoming resistant to antibiotics, rendering the drugs useless.
"If this wave of antibiotic resistance gets over us, we will not be able to do organ transplants, hip replacements, cancer chemotherapy, intensive care and neonatal care for premature babies," he told reporters at a briefing.
Antibiotics are needed in all these treatments to prevent bacterial infection. But drug-resistant bacteria are a growing problem in hospitals worldwide, marked by the rise of superbugs such as methicillin-resistant Staphyloccus aureus (MRSA).
Such infections kill about 25,000 people a year in Europe and around 19,000 in the United States
On top of the risks to future treatments, Monnet said the costs of antibiotic resistance were already hurting -- and may hit healthcare budgets across the European Union yet harder if the problem is not addressed.
The six most common multi-drug-resistant bacteria -- often referred to as superbugs -- cause around 400,000 infections a year in Europe, killing around 25,000 people and using 2.5 million hospital days a year.
The ECDC, which monitors and advises on disease in EU, calculates that with a hospital day costing an average of 366 euros ($548), superbug infections are already sucking up 900 million euros a year in extra hospital costs, and a further 600 million euros a year in lost productivity.
"Across the European Union the number of patients infected by resistant bacteria is increasing and that antibiotic resistance is a major threat to public health," the ECDC said.
Britain's government was criticized by a parliamentary committee on Tuesday for failing to tackle the majority of hospital-acquired infections by narrowing its focus to two high profile ones -- MRSA and Clostridium Difficile.
The ECDC is planning an "antibiotic awareness" campaign on November 18 to urge doctors to stop overprescribing antibiotics.
Patients demanding antibiotics for viral infections often are not aware that they will not work, it said, but doctors are and should stop giving in to pressure.
Sarah Earnshaw of the ECDC's communications unit, pointed to a 2002 survey that showed 60 percent of patients do not know that antibiotics do not work against viruses like flu and colds.
"Patients often demand antibiotics," she said. And doctors often think, she said, that giving in is a quicker way to deal with a demanding patients than persuading them otherwise.