The rise of superbugs, stoked by misuse of antibiotics and poor hospital hygiene, is enabling long-treatable diseases to once again become killers.
(Transcript from World News Radio)
A study by the World Health Organization of antimicrobial resistance - when bacteria becomes immune to the drugs that treat them - describes the problem as a global emergency.
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The unprecedented report gathered data from 114 countries and focused on seven different bacteria responsible for conditions including pneumonia, urinary tract infections, diarrhoea, and gonorrhoea.
The report says even so-called 'last resort' antibiotics are losing their ability to fight bacteria; and in some countries roughly half of the patients studied showed resistance.
The WHO's assistant director-general for health security, Keiji Fukuda says it's a global problem.
"This is something that is occurring in all countries in the world. What it means is that all of us, so our family members our friends when we are most vulnerable and in need of these medicines there is a chance that they are simply not available and we're not going to be able to have access to effective medical care in a number of instances."
Advanced gonorrhoea is spreading at a high rate, bit resistance to antibiotics used to treat it has been confirmed in over ten countries, including Australia.
The report also details a rise in MRSA - methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus - a type of staph infection that's resistant to many antibiotics.
The WHO says patients with MRSA are 64 per cent more likely to die than those with a non-resistant form of the bug.
The Australian Medical Association's Steve Hambleton says the figures are startling.
"Multi-resistant Staphylococcus aureus alone kills about 19,000 people every year in the United States. Now that's more than HIV and AIDS and there are similar numbers in Europe. We know that antibiotic resistance can spread from bug to bug and that's the most disturbing thing that bugs that weren't formerly resistance can acquire this resistance and certainly with people moving around that's a great threat."
Other key findings of the report document the global spread of resistance to carbapenem antibiotics.
These are considered a so-called 'last resort' treatment for life-threatening infections caused by a common intestinal bacteria - often acquired in hospital - and prevalent in newborns and intensive-care patients.
The WHO also reports widespread resistance to one of the most widely-used antibacterial medicines for the treatment of urinary tract infections caused by E. coli.
Doctor Hambleton says there's a range of reasons why this has happened
"There's no doubt there's been overuse of antibiotics in agriculture as growth promotants in raising animals and we need to think very careful about that but also medical use of antibiotics. We have to be very careful to use them at the right time, take the whole course and even more important not to have antibiotics when there is not a bacterial infection to treat."
Lead author of the WHO report Johan Struwe has told the ABC, if drug resistance continues the world may be facing a post-antibiotic era.
"Maybe we cannot treat pneumonia like we can today. We have all the area of medical treatments, chemotherapy and all the others. Where you wipe out the immune system and make patients very vulnerable to infections and bacteria, that cannot be done. It would be high risk. You have major surgery hip replacement or cardiac operations etc where you are needing antibiotic to prevent complications after the surgery."
The report says drug resistance is of particular concern in Africa, the Americas, South and Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.
The AMA's Steve Hambleton says Australia hasn't been as badly affected as some other countries - so far.
"We've had good controls here. We've had cooperation between industry, veterinary practice and medicine. Our doctors do carefully choose antibiotics and we're not as bad. But certainly we are exposed to what happens internationally and our travellers go away and bring back these multiresistant organisms within their bodies."
Doctor Hambleton says a multi-pronged approach is needed to address the crisis, including research into new drugs, a tightening on the usage of old drugs and continued co-operation between human and animal medical industries.
"We need to make sure we co-operate internationally and we are using different antibiotics if we use them at all in agriculture and industry and in growing animals, and reserve antibiotics for humans to make sure we maintain that resistance."
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