Message
from our President
Antibiotics
have been called the single most important therapeutic discovery
in the history of medicine. They have clearly revolutionized our
ability to curb death and disease from infectious microorganisms.
However, the seemingly endless miracles attributed to these drugs
have led to their misuse and overuse. Bacteria have responded to
the widespread applications of antibiotics by finding ways to become
resistant, insensitive to the killing effects of these powerful
drugs. The overuse of antibacterials kills off susceptible bacteria
enabling competitor flora in the environment to proliferate and
cause infection, as well as causing some bacteria to actually develop
mutations conferring resistance.
Thus, antibiotics sow the seeds of their own potential downfall
by selecting for rare strains of bacteria that have the ability
to resist their activity. Many of these resistance traits can be
transferred or spread from one kind of resistant bacteria to other
bacteria, even of different types.
This adverse result of antibiotic use is a phenomenon that I call
the "antibiotic paradox." Fortunately, antibiotics remain
very effective in the treatment of a vast majority of bacterial
infectious diseases. However, in many parts of the world, cost-effective,
inexpensive, and safe antibiotics are no longer successful because
of the bacterial resistance to them that has emerged. Newer drugs
developed to treat resistant bacteria are too expensive for the
limited national budgets of most developing countries. Therefore,
the older antibiotics continue to be used despite growing resistance
patterns and, in turn, continue to propagate new and often more
resistant types of bacteria. Also, the distribution of these drugs
is often uneven. In some areas, antibiotics are being over-used,
while in other areas, often those needing them the most, they are
drastically underused because of a lack of availability. Both overuse
and underuse lead to antibiotic resistance. Hence, the general "use"
of antibiotics needs improvement in all parts of the world.
Our goal is not to suggest the removal of antibiotics from the physician's
armamentarium but, to encourage making them more effective by improving
the way in which they are used in order to curb the emergence and
spread of resistant forms of infectious bacteria. |
