Understanding antibiotic resistance

1 The antibiotic resistance crisis

Start this week by completing the activity below. This will give you a sense of how serious the problem is and an introduction to the factors that drive resistance.

Activity 1 The antibiotic resistance crisis

Allow about 10 minutes

First, watch the following video.

Active content not displayed. This content requires JavaScript to be enabled, and a recent version of Flash Player to be installed.

Video 1 The antibiotic resistance crisis.

Transcript (opens in new window)

Consider the following statements and decide if they are true or false. Write your answer in the right-hand column.

Statement True or false?

1 All antibiotics are antimicrobials but not all antimicrobials are antibiotics.

2 Drug resistance is only a problem in Europe, the USA and other high-income countries (HICs) .

3 Ten million people each year die from antimicrobial resistance (AMR) infection.

4 AMR causes significant economic damage.

5 Using fewer antibiotics will not help reduce antibiotic resistance.

6 It is acceptable to give antibiotics to healthy animals to promote growth.

7 Few new antibiotics are being developed to replace those to which bacteria have become resistant.

8 Antibiotic resistance surveillance data is necessary to inform clinical decision making.

Statement	True or false?
1 All antibiotics are antimicrobials but not all antimicrobials are antibiotics.
2 Drug resistance is only a problem in Europe, the USA and other high-income countries (HICs) .
3 Ten million people each year die from antimicrobial resistance (AMR) infection.
4 AMR causes significant economic damage.
5 Using fewer antibiotics will not help reduce antibiotic resistance.
6 It is acceptable to give antibiotics to healthy animals to promote growth.
7 Few new antibiotics are being developed to replace those to which bacteria have become resistant.
8 Antibiotic resistance surveillance data is necessary to inform clinical decision making.

Answer

TRUE Antibiotics are just one type of antimicrobial drug. Antivirals, antifungals and antiprotozoans are also antimicrobials.
FALSE AMR is a global problem.
FALSE An estimated 700,000 people die every year from AMR infections. This number is expected to rise to 10 million deaths per year by 2050 if resistance is not tackled.
TRUE For example, the estimated cost to the European Union of AMR infections is €1.5 billion per year.
FALSE The more antibiotics that are used, the greater the antibiotic resistance.
FALSE Using antibiotics for reasons other than to treat bacterial infection has been shown to increase antibiotic resistance. You will learn more later about why this happens.
TRUE Pharmaceutical companies find the cost and regulatory challenge of developing new antibiotics prohibitive.
TRUE The impact of inadequate AMR surveillance systems on the spread of antibiotic resistance is discussed in Section 6.

OpenLearn - Understanding antibiotic resistance
ou logo Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.