WHO: Antibiotic Resistance Reaches Alarming Levels Worldwide

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Antibiotic resistance has already reached alarmingly high levels worldwide, the World Health Organization warned Monday.

Antibiotic resistance is a natural phenomenon where bacteria become resistant to antibiotics. When this happens, common infections and small injuries could become fatal. Although this happens naturally, the misuse and overuse of antibiotics drastically hastens the process.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that each year, more than two million people suffer from infections caused by antibiotic-resistant germs and that 23,000 die from these infections, according to NBC News.

"The rise of antibiotic resistance is a global crisis. It's one of the greatest threats to health today. This makes a broad range of common infections much more difficult to treat, replacement treatment are more costly, more toxic, and require much longer periods of time for treatment," Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of WHO, told a news conference Monday, NBC News reports.

Health experts have been warning the public about the harmful effects of antibiotic resistance for many years now, but the problem is still very much there, and is even getting worse.

People around the globe still do not know much about antibiotic resistance, its dangers, and how it could affect them.

A survey about antibiotic resistance was conducted by WHO involving 10,000 participants from 12 countries, as stated in a Yahoo report. The results show a high number of the population does not understand antibiotic resistance. According to WHO's Dr. Keiji Fukuda, 76% of the participants believed antibiotic resistance to be people's resistance to the germs, and not the germs' resistance to antibiotics. Furthermore, nearly two-thirds believes that antibiotics could treat viral infections like colds and flu. Fukuda added that one-third of the participants had said they thought it was best to stop taking antibiotics once they started feeling better.

Certain actions have already been done to help eliminate the problem. NBC News says that in March, a five-year $1.2 billion plan was released by the White House to combat antibiotic-resistant germs. There are bills in Congress as well that would limit the use of antibiotics in farms.

Yahoo also mentions that in order to correct the public's misconceptions about antibiotic resistance, WHO launched the "Antibiotics: Handle with care" campaign. Its objective is to change dangerous behaviors that were found in the survey and make it harder for people to acquire antibiotics without a prescription.

"Doctors need to treat antibiotics as a precious commodity," Chan stated, according to Yahoo.