Every year, millions of children around the world die from infections that are no longer treated with the usual antibiotics. Children from Africa and Southeast Asia-the lowest access to quality medical care-suffer from this global problem. According to the BBC, in 2022, more than three million childhood deaths were associated with infections resistant to medication.
It is a resistance to antimicrobial drugs (CFS), which occurs when bacteria adapt so much that the usual antibiotics become powerless. It is one of the most dangerous threats to public health in the world. New studies based on WHO and World Bank data have recorded more than ten times the growth of such infections among children in only three years. The reasons are the excessive and misuse of antibiotics, including those that should be "backup" - the means of the last hope.
Antibiotics do not treat viruses-such as flu or Covid-19. But they continue to be massively prescribed, often as "prevention", such as before surgery or chemotherapy. This creates ideal conditions for the development of persistent bacteria, while the development of new drugs is lagging behind because it takes time, great investment and difficult research. In Southeast Asia, the use of controlled antibiotics increased by 160%, and in Africa-by 126% only for the period from 2019 to 2021. And this is not the end - the demand for "reserve" antibiotics has increased by 45% and 125%, respectively.
According to Professor Garb Garwell on the initiative of Clinton, there will be almost no alternatives for the treatment of complex infections if resistance to drugs increases at this rate. His team presents the results of the study at the Congress of the European Society for Clinical Microbiology in Vienna. It is not only a medical problem, but a challenge that affects the entire health care system, social policy and even ecology: antibiotics have long been in soil, water and food. According to experts, the best way to avoid a dangerous infection is to avoid infection at all. To do this, it is necessary to: increase the vaccination level, improve sanitary conditions, provide access to clean water, use antibiotics only as directed by a doctor.
Without decisive change, we can lose decades of progress in child health protection.
