ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE: A RISING THREAT

Antibiotics and similar drugs, together called antimicrobial agents, have been used for the last many years to treat patients who have infectious diseases. The treatment of bacterial infections is increasingly complicated because microorganisms can develop resistance to antimicrobial agents, since the first usage of antimicrobials, the resistance among bacteria has progressively increased and has accelerated within the last 10 yea rs. This is largely due to the increasing presence of pathogenic microorganisms with resistance to previous antibiotic agents, resulting in the administration of improper treatment, not only in humans but also in companion and food animals and the environment which has caused the rise in antibiotic resistance. Although efforts are being made in all the areas, there is an urgent need to increase the effectiveness of these interventions or some bacterial infections will become difficult if not impossible to treat reliably.