The scenario is scary at the moment, even if it sounds like it is coming out of a science-fiction horror film. The warning of the World Health Organisation on urgent action to preserve the power of antibiotics and make new ones quickly through applied research has to be heeded if mankind is not to find itself powerless to fight superbugs that have built up resistance to known antibiotics. Pneumonia, diarrhoea gonorrhoea, tuberculosis and urinary tract infections could turn killers on a mass scale as bacteria have built up resistance to the most powerful antibiotics currently available.
The greatest threat is that no country is immune as bacteria and viruses don’t need passports to travel. The pharma industry would need serious help if the antibiotics scene is to change to tackle the new danger. The industry will not budge on its own because of the huge cost of research and patenting of drugs before a new one hits the market. Till then, the world has to make do with about 25 known antibiotics and their variants.
Not known for altruism, the pharma industry is not going to make superdrugs for the use of a few. It will continue to aim for profits by serving the long-term patient with hypertension or diabetes who has to take drugs for a lifetime. The only way past this is to give the industry tax breaks for R&D to take on what could become modern man’s biggest challenge lest infections like the common cold become killers.
