More and more bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, medicines stop working, and very few new ones are produced. This was reported by the German publication Bild.
Thanks to the first antibiotic, penicillin, people can live 30 years longer than before its introduction. However, now humanity risks losing this fight again, the newspaper writes.
A recent study suggests that by 2050, more than 39 million people worldwide could die from infections caused by antibiotic-resistant microorganisms. In the European Union alone, 35,000 people die each year from infections caused by resistant pathogens.
“Firstly, antibiotics are still over-prescribed in outpatient practice. Second, with the return of international travel after the pandemic, we are getting a lot of resistant bacteria. Particularly high levels of resistance are seen in countries such as Greece, Portugal, Türkiye, as well as India and other Asian countries. “People need to be warned: if someone brings such a bacteria on vacation and infects, for example, their sick grandfather, it can be fatal for them.” – said the intensive care professor. Frank M. Brunkhorst of the University Hospital of Jena), indicating the main reasons for these changes.
According to experts, in many cases antibiotics are not necessary, for example in almost all respiratory tract infections. These infections are usually caused by viruses, against which antibiotics are ineffective. However, children who catch colds are often overmedicated. Additionally, antibiotics are too easily prescribed for urinary tract infections such as cystitis, although in most cases they are not necessary.
The shortage of new antibiotics adds to the crisis: only 12 new drugs have been approved since 2017.
Teacher Yvonne Mast from the Leibniz Institute DSMZ in Braunschweig points out that the path from the discovery of a new substance to its application is long and expensive.
“Especially clinical trials are expensive. Only one in every 5,000 substances is used commercially, which takes between 8 and 15 years and its development costs between 100 and 2 billion euros. Due to unfavorable cost-benefit ratios, the industry is gradually withdrawing from antibiotic development and research. The returns on investment for antibiotics are significantly lower than those for other medications. We urgently need more funding in this area, including more grants and faster solutions. The technologies are already there. But there are very few funds. As in many other areas, we may be surpassed by countries like China, which are investing much more in this area,” says the professor.
Professor Brunkhorst said it was a big challenge for policymakers to return antibiotic production to Germany and Europe. According to him, today not a single medicine is produced in Germany, they all come from India or China, on which Germany completely depends.
“We are about to lose the achievements of modern medicine and return to the era before the discovery of penicillin.” —said this week the president of the Society of Infectious Therapy. Pablo Ehrlich Matias Pletz.
Bild writes that the German Ministry of Health refused to comment on its statement, highlighting only the improvement in the field of drug supply thanks to the law to combat supply shortages.
