Steven Vates

David Cameron gets serious about antibiotics — too little too late?

David Cameron has announced a review into why so few antimicrobials have been introduced over recent years. This seems to be too little too late. The impending car crash in healthcare of death from minor surgeries and incidental infections looms over us all. I have seen patients in critical care die of infections because we literally had no drugs left to treat them with. The continued evolution of bugs – MRSA and others– against our best drugs has been a huge problem for some time, one that rightly makes headlines problems. But it is hard for a society to take a such a grave threat seriously until it reaches epidemic proportions – and by then, it is not an exaggeration to say, we could all be at risk.

I have heard unsubstantiated rumours that there is not a single new antibiotic in development.

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