By Claire Soares
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Humans are building up
dangerous
levels of resistance to modern antibiotics
that could leave them
vulnerable to killer diseases, the U.N. World
Health Organization
said on Tuesday.
Farmers who use antibiotics to fatten up
livestock and poultry are
aggravating the problem because microbes on
animals build up
defenses against the drugs, then jump across
the food chain and
attack human immune systems, WHO said.
The world health body said tuberculosis
strains in several countries
had become resistant to two of the most
effective drugs and some
antimalarial medicines had become practically
useless as parasites
adapted their defenses.
"Antibiotics were one of the most significant
discoveries of the 20th
century," WHO Director Gro Harlem Brundtland
said in a statement.
"Unless we act to protect these medical
miracles, we could be
heading for a post-antibiotic age in which
many medical and surgical
advances could be undermined by the risk of
incurable infection."
The WHO said industry data showed
pharmaceutical companies had
spent more than $17 billion over the past
five years on developing
medicines to treat infectious diseases.
"Unless drug resistance is tackled quickly,
much of that investment
could be lost," the organization said.
WHO urged patients, doctors, hospitals,
farmers and legislators to
take action to contain the threat.
The body wants farmers to stop using
antibiotics simply to make their
animals grow, and recommends that when
animals are ill, their
owners should have a prescription for any
necessary drugs.
Human patients should avoid putting pressure
doctors to give them
antibiotics, the report said. Doctors should
prescribe drugs
specifically to match a person's illness,
rather than automatically
giving them the newest or best known
medication. And hospitals
should develop more stringent monitoring
systems, it added.
"This strategy is designed to promote the
wiser use of drugs so that
resistance is minimized and effective
treatments can continue to be
used for generations to come," David Heymann,
director for
communicable diseases, said.
