Drug companies are partly to blame for the rise of antibiotic resistance, which threatens to make even what was once the mildest of infections deadly. The Times reports that this is according to Karl Rotthier, CEO of the Dutch DSM Sinochem Pharmaceuticals who claims that although doctors have usually been blamed for bacterial resistance because of over-prescribing, lax procedures at drugs companies are the real cause. He said the industry that produced life-saving antibiotics was also fuelling a global crisis.
Rotthier said the world risks "sleepwalking" towards the end of modern medicine and a "post-antibiotic era". "For a couple of years now antimicrobial resistance has been rising and if we don't do anything we risk deaths of up to 10million a year by 2050," he said. "Something once as innocuous as a throat infection could become a life-threatening condition, and treatments such as transplant surgery would become impossible.
Rotthier said: "Most antibiotics are now produced in China and India and I do not think it is unjust to say that the environmental conditions have been quite different in these regions. "Poor controls mean that antibiotics are leaking out and getting into drinking water. They are in the fish and cattle that we eat, and global travel and exports mean bacteria are travelling. That is making a greater contribution to the growth of antibiotic resistance than over-prescribing."
Rotthier said the responsibility was on everyone, from patients and doctors to governments and pharmaceutical companies, to take immediate steps to ensure the "legacy of antibiotics as a life-saving medicine is not squandered". "In some countries antibiotics are readily available over the counter and they are being given to cattle and painted on to boats to prevent algae," Rotthier added. "We need to insist on the highest standards of environmental protection methods for producing antibiotics so no waste water and sludge ends up in our lakes."
[link url="http://www.timeslive.co.za/Feeds/2015/01/19/antibiotics-resistance-drug-firms-to-blame"]Full report in The Times[/link]