Antibiotic drugs revolutionized modern medicine since they were first introduced in the 1940s. But bacteria - the sometimes-lethal bugs that antibiotics fight - are becoming resistant to the drugs at a faster pace than scientists can develop new medicines.
Today, many bacteria that most frequently cause hospital-acquired infections are resistant to the preferred antibiotic for treatment. Many other pathogens, including those that cause malaria, tuberculosis, gonorrhea, HIV/AIDS, and salmonellosis, are becoming resistant to standard therapy.
Microbes are challenging us in ways we wouldn't have imagined 10 years ago and for which we're not well prepared.
On a good day, we hold them at bay. On a bad day they're winning.
Natural selection plays a big role. Most bacteria which are exposed to an antibiotic are killed. However, some survive and pass their resistance traits to new generations of bacteria, which are produced every 20 minutes!
This situation is made worse when patients fail to follow doctors' instructions for the use of antibiotics or when physicians prescribe antibiotics inappropriately.
At the same time, world travel and the globalization of our food supply are exposing us to an increasingly wide variety of microbes. Also increasing our risk is poor hygiene - the way we wash our hands and handle foods.
There are scores of known bacterial diseases that no longer respond to older antibiotics such as penicillin. Some bacterial infections reported in Japan defy every antibiotic known to modern medicine.
One result is that hospitals have become the habitat for increasing numbers of dangerous bacterial infections that resist antibiotics.
The severely reduced effectiveness of antibiotics as weapons against disease is not only exposing large numbers of people to deadly infections, it could also limit our ability to perform major surgeries and other medical acts that rely on antibiotics to cope with any resulting infection.
The Canadian Committee on Antibiotic Resistance (CCAR) has been created to co-ordinate activities and information for health care professionals, patients, the general public and others who can help to stem the rising tide of microbial resistance to antibiotic medicines.
