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Antibiotics are losing effectiveness and putting lives at risk
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
Antibiotics are losing their effectiveness and therefore more and more people may become victims of conventional drugs, the uncontrolled use of which can lead to death.
The UK's chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies says patients should cut down on the antibiotics they take to treat mild cold symptoms such as sore throats, earaches, coughs and sinusitis.
The overuse of antibiotics has led to the rise of resistant bacteria, meaning the human body has begun to resist the action of antibiotics. This can lead to even the most routine medical procedures becoming life-threatening for patients.
"Antibiotics are rapidly losing their effectiveness. This is very worrying, but unfortunately irreversible. This situation is comparable to global warming, which cannot be stopped," comments Lady Davis. The situation is aggravated by the fact that new antibiotics are practically non-existent."
If antibiotic use is not curbed, the situation could reach a point where people die from heart surgery, the Health Protection Agency said in a statement.
According to Dr. McNulty, a microbiologist at the Health Protection Agency, studies of 1,770 people show that over the course of a year, 26% asked their doctor for an antibiotic prescription, and 85% of them got a prescription. Thirty-two percent had used antibiotics in the past 12 months.
McNulty says doctors should cut back on prescribing antibiotics, especially when a patient doesn't have a compelling reason to use them. But at the same time, patients should stop pressuring their doctors to write them a prescription and get better quickly with antibiotics.
Doctors note that the more antibiotics a person takes, and the more often he does it, the more resistant the next infection will be, and the more difficult it will be to fight it.
Scientists are particularly concerned about the resistance of Escherichia coli, which causes pneumonia.
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