25,000 Europeans Will Die From Antibiotic Resistant Infections This Year
November 18, 2011, Submitted by: Ken Tweet
Is it just the beginning? This year, 25,000 people from the EU will will be fatally infected by untreatable infections. Several years ago the World Health Organization warned that the world risked returning to the pre-antibiotic era when infections did not respond to treatment. Apparently the warnings have been ignored as the current antibiotics have been broadly overused and are losing (or have lost) their effectiveness as the virus’s adapt.
Researchers speak of a “nightmare scenario” if the gene for NDM-1 production is spread more widely, a global ticking time-bomb.
In another example,
The European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC) said yesterday that in some countries up to 50 per cent of cases of blood poisoning caused by one bug – K. pneumoniae, a common cause of urinary and respiratory conditions – were resistant to carbapenems, the most powerful class of antibiotics.
The UK Health Protection Agency warned doctors last month to abandon a drug usually used to treat a common sexually transmitted disease because it was no longer effective. The agency said that gonorrhoea – which caused 17,000 infections in 2009 – should be treated with two drugs instead of one and warned of a “very real threat of untreatable gonorrhoea in the future.”
The world is being driven towards the “unthinkable scenario of untreatable infections”, experts are warning, because of the growth of superbugs resistant to all antibiotics and the dwindling interest in developing new drugs to combat them.
Source: The INDEPENDENT
A question is, when will the number of fatalities from untreatable infections begin a rapid parabolic move upward? When that day comes, it will be too late for an unthinkable number of people. Too late for new development of other antibiotics. The microbes will have won.
For those who are skeptical, please research the 1918 Flu Pandemic.
The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. Known as “Spanish Flu” or “La Grippe” the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster.
Source: Stanford University
A wide spread untreatable pandemic is something that none of us alive have ever experienced. Even when reading about other historic outbreaks, it doesn’t seem real, because it hasn’t happened to us. We cannot fully grasp the horror that must have permeated society during those ill times.
So for now, all we can do is be reasonably prepared as best we can. To stand a fighting chance against a pandemic with a high mortality rate, it will be essential to stay out of ‘public’ as much as possible. This will require a degree of self-isolation for as long as you can pull it off, until the pandemic has run its course. Any exposure to others will risk your own well being (depending of course on the type of transmission, mortality rate, etc.).
How then to prepare for pandemic?
Answer: Have enough food and supplies stashed away for the duration so you don’t have to go out in public. Have enough finances saved so you can pay the bills for the duration – and not have to go to work and risk being exposed (yes, you might lose your job, but you may also lose your life if you work during a fatal pandemic season).
In summary, the fact that we are being warned by the WHO and other health organizations that ‘SuperBugs’ are gaining ground, should be a wake up call for a vast world population that is way overdue for a terrible pandemic. I hope that it never comes to be, but I will prepare as though it is coming.
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Pathogens have that knack of ADAPTING to antibiotics and anti-viral and people are going to find that they just cannot keep up at one point. I hate to rehash this, but overpopulation and filthy places like India and other humid hot slums around the world are PERFECT breeding grounds for the next nightmare super germ. IT IS COMING SOMEDAY< IT IS.
People feel that they will be able to come out with a vaccine against ANY virus or even bacteria. This may be true, but there is the time element to consider. Even if they could come up with a vaccine in less than 1 month, if something like that super strain of the flu were to develop like the movie The Stand, most of humanity would be dead within a couple of weeks anyway.
The real answer to stopping some super germ, no matter viral of bacteria, is PREVENTION. Don't allow something to get going in the firstplace. This means SANITATION. People have to realize that cleaning up these favelas is not only helping those that live there, but probably saving their own butts in the process. I know this won't happen, but this is the real answer because germs adapt too quickly for humans to keep up with.
To the common person when something does hit, most infections occur from handling of objects as this is where the greatest concentration occus of germs. Meticulous cleaning of EVERYTHING touched can be the difference between being sick or not, and not forgetting to do this everything. Of course some super air borne virus and the best course of action might be a nice deserted place somewhere, I guess.
25,000 for the E.U. area alone. I wonder what the worldwide hit rate would be.
If the true number was reported I would suspect that the M.S.M. would be crying out “Pandemic”.
I think we all know someone who has been affected by someone who has contracted a variation of the a superbug.
I know at least one person who’s death certificate read “cause cancer” when in reality the person died of an infection contracted in the operating theater. (they would have died of the cancer later on).
Other people I know are requiring non urgent surgery however they’re more worried about catching a superbug in the hospital then they are of the underlying cause for the hospital treatment.
One recent development in Australia has seen that more diligent washing hands of health staff has tended to reduce the incidence of MSRA’s in health establishments.
While I agree that this is an issue to consider, comparing the pandemics of 100 years ago, to something that can happen today is like comparing apples and oranges. We have recently seen outbreaks of SARS and Swine flu, that did kill many, and spread worldwide, but for the most part were contained to minimal damage as compared to what happened years ago. The best way to be prepared is to wash many times a day, especially during cold and flu season. Use of anti bacterial rinse when in contact with members of the public are a good idea too.