Inter Press Service: Resistance to Antibiotics: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
“The growing resistance to antibiotics and other antimicrobials due to their overuse and misuse both in humans and animals has become an alarming global threat to public health, food safety, and security, causing the deaths of 700,000 people each year. … The good news is that now more and more countries have adopted measures to prevent the excessive and wrong use of antimicrobials. The bad ones are that these drugs continue to be intensively utilized to accelerate the growth of animals, often for the sake of obtaining greater commercial benefits. According to the first annual survey conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. (FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO), and … the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), more than 6.5 billion people — over 90 percent of the world’s population — now live in country that has in place, or is developing, a national action plan on antimicrobial resistance (AMR)…” (Kamal, 12/6).