Superbug risk 'worse' than terror attack warns chief medical officer Gary Geelhoed
- From: The Sunday Times
- March 17, 2013
WA faces a "potential catastrophe, worse than a terrorist attack" if people continue to take antibiotics unnecessarily, the states top medical boss has warned.
Chief Medical Officer Gary Geelhoed urged healthy people not to take antibiotics for a simple case of the flu or face a future where an infection would be fatal and surgeries impossible.
The over-use of antibiotics has created a new wave of dangerous ‘superbugs’ that are resistant to every medication doctors throw at it.
In response to the threat, WA Health is currently forming a specialist committee to restrict the use of antibiotics.
England’s Chief Medical Officer this week joined other health authorities voicing alarm about the issue, ranking it alongside terrorism as a risk to the United Kingdom.
Prof Geelhoed said the problem was worse in other countries but there had been an increase in superbugs detected in WA over the past decade.
“In the worst case scenario, when you look at terrorism and you count the number of people who die, it pales in comparison to how (antibiotic resistance) could affect a lot more people,” Prof Geelhoed said.
“It’s becoming more of a problem now because the choices we have of antibiotics is running out.
“There is more and more resistance and this means that now some people are getting infections that we literally don’t have an antibiotic to cure it and we’re falling back on techniques that haven’t been exercised for half a century or more.
“We are seeing more (antibiotic resistant bacteria), slowly year by year, we find that antibiotics that are tried and tested don’t work anymore.”
Prof Geelhoed said WA hospitals had stringent protocols in place to prevent the spread of superbugs, but it was up to everyone in the community, including patients and doctors, to act responsibly.
“For most people who get the flu, there is no benefit from antibiotics,” Prof Geelhoed said. “Viral infections aren’t affected by antibiotics, but if there are complications such as with older people or asthmatics or a bacterial respiratory infection, then antibiotics might be needed.”
Continued overuse of antibiotics could lead to a future where doctors could not perform surgery because of the risk of the patient developing an untreatable infection.
“It could well be catastrophic if more people die from infection than presently and we would have to change the way we do things,” Prof Geelhoed said. “For example transplants and operations in the abdomen and bowel, which is full of bacteria, may become too unsafe.
Microbiology expert David Speers said that as well as increasing the risk to the community, people who unnecessarily took antibiotics could develop future health problems.
“If a person uses a lot of antibiotics, that will give a growth advantage to resistant (bacteria) and change the bacteria in their gut,” Dr Speers said. “If that person later develops an infection, then it may already be resistant to antibiotics.
“After taking antibiotics, you may not realise that anything is wrong, but there could be negative consequences later down the track.
Dr Speers said the new wave of superbugs had appeared in the 1990s, but had really picked up pace in the past five years.
“In WA, we’ve seen small increases, but nothing like in other parts of the world.”
However, the growing crisis in other countries still put WA at risk because of the ease and prevalence of international travel.
Australian Medical Association President Richard Choong said some patients used medications they were previously prescribed by a doctor, which could lead to the unnecessary use of antibiotics.
"Also, some people inappropriately hold off longer than they should or are reluctant to take antibiotics and it may have progressed from a chest infection to pneumonia before they present and that's more difficult to treat," he said.
“There’s also a lot of self-prescribing – where a patient is given a script for something or someone else and later on when they get something else, they self-initiate treatment and can take unnecessary medication.”
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