The widespread misuse of antibiotics in humans, animals and the environment must stop

In the first two articles in this series on the antibiotic resistance pandemic, we established the size of the problem, with new data showing that 4.5 million people died in 2019 with an antibiotic resistant bacterial infection, nearly 1.3 million as a direct result of that infection. Furthermore, antibiotic use in childhood is associated with a variety of illnesses in later life.

We also explained how bacteria become resistant to antibiotics and that the more antibiotics we use, the more resistance increases. This results in the need to use last resort antibiotics for everyday infections like cystitis, pneumonia, gonorrhoea, and meningitis, some of which are now, untreatable. Moreover, we also explained how this process happens in animals, be they your pets or animals produced for food.