Scratch could prove deadly as antibiotics stop working, warns expert

MINOR injuries such as a child’s scratched knee and routine operations such as hip replacements could become deadly due to growing resistance to antibiotics, the head of the world’s health watchdog has warned.

Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organisation (WHO), said a global crisis in antibiotics caused by rapidly evolving resistance among microbes responsible for infections, could turn them into untreatable diseases.

She warned that as a result, organ transplants, cancer chemotherapy, and care of premature babies would become “far more difficult or even too dangerous to undertake”.

However, a leading microbiologist at Health Protection Scotland described her comments as “alarmist” and said effective action is being taken in the UK to tackle resistance to antibiotics.

Dr Chan told a meeting of infectious disease experts in Copenhagen Denmark, that every antibiotic was at risk of becoming useless.

“A post-antibiotic era means, in effect, an end to modern medicine as we know it,” she said. “Things as common as strep throat or a child’s scratched knee could once again kill.”

She continued: “Antimicro-bial resistance is on the rise in Europe and elsewhere in the world. We are losing our first-line anti-microbials.

“Replacement treatments are more costly, more toxic, need much longer durations of treatment, and may require treatment in intensive care units.

“For patients infected with some drug-resistant pathogens, mortality has been shown to increase by around 50 per cent.

“Some sophisticated interventions like hip replacements, organ transplants, cancer chemotherapy, and care of pre-term infants, would become far more difficult or even too dangerous to undertake.”

However, Professor Alistair Leanord, consultant microbiologist at Health Protection Scotland, said he thought Dr Chan’s comments were “fairly alarmist”.

“There’s a concern in the microbial world about anti-microbial resistance and we have seen resistance increasing, but we haven’t seen the doomsday scenario as it’s laid out here.”

He said considerable work had been carried out in the UK over the past decade to ensure correct use of antibiotics, making sure they are prescribed at the correct doses for the right period of time.

“We are no longer seeing them given as a panacea by general practitioners for minor coughs and sneezes,” he said.

Latest figures for Scotland show that use of some antibiotics linked to increased resistance of microbes have dropped dramatically in recent years.

Use of a class of antibiotics called “cephalosporins,” once commonly prescribed for diarrhoea and linked to resistance of Clostridium difficile infection, has fallen by 47 per cent between 2008 and 2010.

Dr Chan was speaking as the WHO launched The Evolving Threat of Antimicrobial Resistance: Options for Action, a book that warns that breakthrough treatments discovered in the last century for flu, tuberculosis, malaria and HIV may become ineffective in the coming years.

Antibiotics statistics

25,000 people in Europe die every year from antibiotic resistant infections

90% of staphyloccocus aureas infections are now resistant to penicillin, which was introduced in the 1940s.

1.9% drop in use of antibiotics in primary care in Scotland in 2010 compared to 2009, according to Health Protection Scotland.

47% drop in use of cephalosporins – antibiotics known to increase risk of Clostridium difficile infection – pictured – from 2008 to 2010 in Scotland, according to Health Protection Scotland.