Professor Dame Sally Davies describes it as a ‘ticking time bomb’ The danger posed by growing resistance to antibiotics should be ranked along with terrorism on a list of threats to the nation, the UK’s chief medical officer has said .Professor Dame Sally Davies described it as a \"ticking time bomb\".
She warned that routine operations could become deadly in just 20 years if we lose the ability to fight infection.
Dame Sally urged the government to raise the issue during next month\'s G8 Summit in London.
\"If we don\'t take action, then we may all be back in an almost 19th Century environment where infections kill us as a result of routine operations. We won\'t be able to do a lot of our cancer treatments or organ transplants,\" said Dame Kelly.
She said pharmaceutical companies needed to be encouraged to develop new drugs, because the manufacture of antibiotics was not viewed as profitable.
\"We haven\'t had a new class of antibiotics since the late 80s and there are very few antibiotics in the pipeline of the big pharmaceutical companies that develop and make drugs,\" she said.
Antimicrobial resistance happens when organisms are able to survive medicines aimed to destroy them.
Bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics, viruses to antivirals and parasites to drugs like antimalarials.
The World Health Organisation says 150,000 deaths a year are caused by multi-drug resistant tuberculosis.
\"We haven\'t as a society globally incentivised making antibiotics. It\'s quite simple - if they make something to treat high blood pressure or diabetes and it works, we will use it on our patients everyday.
\"Whereas antibiotics will only be used for a week or two when they\'re needed, and then they have a limited life span because of resistance developing anyway.\"
Dame Sally said action was needed to overcome this \"market failure\" and pointed to the Innovative Medicines Initiative - an EU funded body whose aim is to promote the development of new medicines.
Dr Ibrahim Hassan, a consultant microbiologist at Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester, said there are more cases of patients with bacterial infections resistant to antibiotics - meaning there are fewer treatment options.
\"All you can hope of is a bit of holy water because you don\'t have too much option in terms of treatment.
\"We\'re beginning to see that in some hospitals, patients coming in with this infection with no antibiotic that can be used to treat them.\"