• Question: what is antibiotic resistence

    Asked by anon-200910 to David, Rosemary, Oliver, Leigh, Jordan, Hannah on 6 Mar 2019. This question was also asked by anon-200228.
    • Photo: David Walker-Sünderhauf

      David Walker-Sünderhauf answered on 6 Mar 2019:

      Antibiotic Resistance is when bacteria are resistant to antibiotics. This means, for example if you catch an E. coli stomach bug that is antibiotic resistant, using antibiotics that you’d get from the doctor wouldn’t help as they can’t kill this particular strain of bacteria!
      For many reasons, antibiotic resistance is on the rise (there are more & more “superbugs” resistant to several antibiotics causing problems in hospitals), and this is a huge problem – before the discovery of antibiotics in the 1920’s, infections from for example a scratch could kill you, and complex surgeries were impossible due to high infection risk.

      Basically, if we don’t find a solution to this problem of antibiotic resistance, we won’t be able to use our routine drugs in healthcare as too many bacteria will not be affected by antibiotics anymore!

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