David Cameron Pushes for Measures Against Antibiotic Resistant Superbugs

For decades doctors have been creating vaccines and medicines to protect people from getting sick. While this has saved countless lives it has also opened the way for new types of bugs and viruses to evolve. Currently drug-resistant superbugs are growing in numbers and are making some top officials nervous.

Superbugs are strains of bacteria that have become resistant to different types of antibiotics. According to the CDC more than 2 million people a year are infected with these kinds of superbugs, and from them at least 23,000 people lose their lives to them. Tuberculosis, gonorrhea, and staph infections are among the diseases that have formed drug-resistant strains.

Superbugs are formed by the unnecessary or excessive use of antibiotics. They are meant to destroy disease causing bacteria, preventing the sickness. They are, however, ineffective against illnesses that involve viruses. When bacteria enter a person they replicate on their own, whereas the virus is much smaller and capable of turning cells into virus factories. For this reason antibiotics do not help when someone is infected with a virus strain.

As the antibiotics run their course some of the bacteria will be able to survive. They will then multiply in this new environment, thus creating a new drug resistant strain. As more people take medicine needlessly more bacteria becomes resistant, and then they may share that characteristic with other bacteria. It is a problem that can quickly snowball if the problem is not taken seriously.

Prime Minister David Cameron has decided to commit the UK to battling this problem while also calling for more global effort. Having taken a strong stance for advancing medicine in the past Cameron continues to push for stronger medications. He told the Times. "This is not some distant threat, but something happening right now. If we fail to act, we are looking at an almost unthinkable scenario where antibiotics no longer work and we are cast back into the dark ages of medicine, where treatable infections and injuries will kill once again"

Cameron's fear of the world falling back into the dark ages may be excessive, but the fear of superbugs is very real. If they are not dealt with it could be possible for benign diseases to cause much more damage than they used to.