Importance of antibiotics has been forgotten

I don't take antibiotics very often, but my doctor had to prescribe some to me a few days ago.

As I was getting the prescription filled, I started thinking about a serious problem that has emerged in relation to antibiotics, one that requires the cooperation of all of us to help solve.

For some years now, the medical community has been warning that we are overusing these potentially life-saving drugs, to the detriment of their effectiveness in fighting disease and infections.

A new warning came out earlier this month from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) stating that antibiotics had become so overused in Europe that some important medical treatments might soon be impossible.

The problem is increasing bacterial resistance to antibiotics. Bacteria are not static. Like other living things, they can over time develop increased resistance to adverse conditions, just like humans do to viruses such as the flu.

 By overusing antibiotics, it shortens the time when bacteria become resistant to the drugs used against them, essentially making them useless for fighting infections.

This is no small matter. A spokesman for the ECDC said it is a threat to the "whole span of modern medicine," according to a Reuters news agency report.

"If this wave of antibiotic resistance gets over us, we will not be able to do organ transplants, hip replacements, cancer chemotherapy, intensive care and neonatal care for premature babies," said Dominique Monnet.

What he didn't emphasize was the danger it would cause for routine care many of us receive for everyday infections that we now assume will be taken care of easily and quickly.

Most of us have grown up in an age of "miracle medicine" which is primarily due to drug treatments, especially antibiotics. Before their development around World War II, death and impairment from bacterial infections was quite common since the only treatment in some cases was the natural resistance of the body's immune system.

The arrival of penicillin and related drugs was indeed seen as miraculous by family members who had watched loved ones suffer and die from infections that today we see as rather benign and routine. Even a minor cut that became infected could kill without the help of antibiotics.

Over the years bacteria have developed more and more resistance to antibiotics, something that has increased in recent times due to commonplace acceptance of them and a lack of understanding of the danger. To cope, researchers have looked for and developed variations of antibiotic drugs in an effort to restore the equilibrium in the battle between drugs and bacteria.

But the battle is being lost and it is now seen as a major threat to public health. An estimated 20,000 people a year die in America due to drug-resistant bacteria.

Doctors are getting some of the blame for over-prescribing antibiotics when they are not really needed and even giving them for things against which they don't work, like colds and the flu. But often it is because their patients insist on it.

Doctors should resist these demands - they know better - but sometimes to maintain good patient relations and move on to the next case, they will give in.

Even when the drugs are properly prescribed, as they were in my case, there can be a problem. If patients stop taking them early - before the bacteria have been completely killed - the remaining ones can emerge with resistance.

We need to stop taking these drugs lightly. They are too important to our well-being to be casually thrown away by our lack for foresight.

Terry Ross is director of the Yuma Sun's News and Information Center.

E-mail him at tross@yumasun.com or phone him at 539-6870.