• Question: how many germs are there in the world

    Asked by paca490key to Bruno Silvester on 1 Jul 2023.
    • Photo: Bruno Silvester Lopes

      Bruno Silvester Lopes answered on 1 Jul 2023:

      Absolutely loads and loads but there are some that are more powerful than others. The world health organisation lists them as critical priority and high priority germs. It simply means that there are not enough medicines to tackle infections caused by these germs. Some examples of these bugs which I work on include Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa (both cause hospital acquired infections), Helicobacter pylori (only know bacteria that cause cancer), Campylobacter spp (cause food poisoning). If you want to read further then just search for CDC or WHO priority pathogens.

Comments

  • Photo: Bruno Silvester

    Bruno Silvester commented on :

    The total estimate of bacteria that live around us is five million trillion trillion. 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Bacteria, viruses and other microbes which belong to approx 1,400 unique groups out of 100 million types of organisms can cause disease in humans. The bacterium Clostridium botulinum produces a toxin so powerful that 3 grams would be enough to kill the population of the United Kingdom and 400 grams would kill everyone on the planet.
    Thanks for the question 😀