The Meaning Of Antibiotic Apocalypse & Its Implications On Health care In The Impending New World Order: Is This The Beginning Of The End Of Humanity? (Research-backed)
Hello Steemians. You are welcome to my blog.
Introduction
Today, we will be looking at the meaning of the term 'Antibiotic Apocalypse' and its implications on health care in today's world. My decision to carry out a detailed study on this subject was instigated by the scourge of stubborn and strange diseases that have become a common sight within my locality and the world at large. It is now very common to see people suffering from all manners of diseases that seem untreatable. From leg ulcers, typhoid, malaria, pneumonia to tumors of various types.
More worrisome to me is the superstitious stance of the majority towards this menace, attaching it to some diabolical activities of perceived enemies. The penchant to embrace diabolism and ritualism against empiricism is a major barrier to scientific development in Africa. People are inclined to believe that any disease that defies treatment is diabolically invoked by the victim's enemies. When someone dies prematurely in most developing countries, there is always accusations and counter accusations as to who is responsible for the death. A stupendously wealthy person is mostly believed to have acquired his wealth by help of ritual sacrifices and occultism.
These baseless false assumptions appear to be drawing attention from the root causes of untreatable diseases in the face of the threat of the impending new world Order (— end of the antibiotic Era also known as Antibiotic Apocalypse), while people continue to abuse antibiotics unabatedly in their ignorance, endangering global health by way of transmitting resistant strains to other people. This article is therefore a wake up call on all citizens of third world countries, like myself, where superstitious believes are given more regards than the message of medical science.
Having said that, however, it is important to understand the concept of antibiotic resistance first before focusing on the meaning of Antibiotic Apocalypse and its implications on health care, because the former gives rise to the later.
Antibiotic Resistance
According to World Health Organization (WHO):
Antibiotics are those medicines that are used to prevent and treat bacterial infections. Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria change in response to the use of these medicines in such a way that the medicines are no longer effective at killing them. source
What becomes resistant to antibiotics are the bacteria and not humans or animals. When these resistant bacteria infect humans and animals, infections they cause are harder to treat than infections caused by non-resistant bacteria.
Today, such common infections as malaria, pneumonia tuberculosis, gonorrhea and blood poisoning are becoming harder, and in some cases impossible, to treat. This is because bacteria is developing new resistance mechanisms to withstand the cidal effect of antibiotics. So antibiotics are loosing the fight, becoming less effective with each passing day.
Untreatable nature of some diseases is due to this fact, and not any witchcraft as a soothsayer would have you believe.
How Antibiotic Resistance Occurs
There are two major ways resistance occurs in microorganisms; namely natural and unnatural routes.
Naturally, some bacteria are resistant to certain kinds of antibiotics. How this happens and spread is well explained by the image below:
Unnaturally, bacteria can also acquire resistance by getting a copy of a gene that is encoding an altered protein or an enzyme like beta lactamase from other resistant bacteria which might even be of different species. The processes through which this can occur unnaturally include transformation, via plasmid, transposon and even by scavenging DNA remnants of dead bacteria. Going deep to explain these processes is outside the scope of this article. So you read it up by asking Google. However, the image below is the summary of a typical case of bacterial gene transfer.
End Of Antibiotic Era (Antibiotic Apocalypse)
The discovery of antibiotics in 20th century changed medicine. Today, they are widely employed in the treatment of infections caused by bacteria. However, bacteria are beginning to withstand and adapt to the drugs and so are becoming more difficult to kill.
Now imagine a situation you develop an infection — anything from common easily treatable urinary tract infections to a more difficult to treat tuberculosis — and there is nothing doctors can do. Imagine such a scenario. That's basically what Antibiotic Apocalypse (otherwise called end of Antibiotic Era or post-antibiotic Era)
In the words of Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO), Margaret Chan:
The emergence of bacterial resistance is outpacing the world's capacity for antibiotics discovery. With few replacement products in the pipeline, the world is heading towards a post Antibiotic Era in which common infections will kill once again.source
From the ongoing discourse antibiotic Apocalypse is simply a future without antibiotics and that would certainly be deadly.
In a study conducted by the South China Agricultural University and Cardiff University by Yi-Yun et AL (2015),and published in the UK based monthly Medical Journal of Research and Review known as Lancet Infectious Diseases, it was reported that bacteria that's completely resistant to 'last resort' antibiotics (also known as polymyxins) has been discovered in China. It was reported that the resistance was caused by a new mutation termed the MRC-1, which prevented colistin, a polymyxins from killing bacteria.
In a chat with BBC, Timothy Walsh who is a Professor at University of Cardiff, and who was among the project team, said and I quote:
If MRC-1 becomes global, which is a case of when not if, and the gene aligns itself with other antibiotic resistance genes, which is inevitable, then we will have very likely reach the start of the post-antibiotic Era. source
No one discribes what would happen under this situation better than the Chief Executive of Antibiotic Research, Professor Colin Garner, who said:
The term Apocalypse is appropriate because we will lose all the benefits that Antibiotics provide and medicine could be plunged into the dark ages. Travel would be out of the question, childbirth would be dancing with death, paper cuts and other minor infections would kill once again, while surgery and cancer therapies, which rely upon antibiotics, would be under severe threat. This is the future humanity faces when antibiotics stop working — and scientists say we are fast approaching a doomsday scenario. source
Prevention And Control
According to WHO:
Antibiotic resistance is accelerated by the misuse and overuse of antibiotics, as well as poor infection prevention and control. Steps can therefore be taken at all levels of the society and by all stakeholders to reduce the impact in order to limit the spread of resistance.source
Images below by WHO succinctly outline the duties of visible stakeholders in ensuring that bacteria resistance is brought under control.
What can individuals do?
What can managers of agricultural sector do?
What can health workers do?
What can policy makers do?
Conclusion
I think the reality of the increasing rate of Antibiotic resistance and the speed we are advancing into Apocalypse, is very obvious. Rather than attaching the cases of untreatable diseases pervading the world today, most especially third world countries, people should sit up, appreciate and face the challenges squarely through abstaining from activities that tend to give impetus to the spread of the menace. This way, at least, we can delay the speed at which we're approaching the state of Antibiotic Apocalypse, which is already within our radius.
Personally, I don't believe this will mark an end to humanity as I am a strong believer in dynamics of science. The fact that no new Antibiotics has been invented since 1980 doesn't mean science is comatose. Pharmaceutical science may be comatose presently because there is no apparent serious threats against them. By the time the situation begins to slip out of hand, I believe government would come up with a more stringent policy that would force pharmaceutical companies to either come with new lines of antibiotics or wind up. Under such situation, I believe the would do something.
Thanks for reading and do RESTEEM this post for wider public awareness.
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Na Your Naija Boi, Euro,
@eurogee
References for further reading
https://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/about.html
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/antibiotic-resistance/en/
http://young-perspective.net/antibiotic-apocalypse/
https://www.google.com.ng/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/health-34857015
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-21702647
https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/antibiotic-resistance
Thanks @jodipamungkas and @gbenga for the badge
Yes i could relate to this, constant use of antibiotics is bad... Sometimes it leaves ones body prone to diseases ... Thanks for sharing.
Welcome. You are very right
Desperation has always caused man to push beyond it's limits. If MRC-1 becomes a global problem (and we should not wait for that to happen), it would create a lot of havoc. From Mother Nature's perspective, there is nothing wrong with bacteria evolving to a level where they can destroy man as they are doing what they can to ensure the survival of their species. Therefore, I don't see any reason why we should not do our best to evolve to a stage where they can't easily bring us down anymore. We might not be able to evolve as fast as these bacteria can(They have hundreds of generations in a short time span) but we have the technology that can help make our body almost or completely immune to the adverse effects of these bacteria infections (The way "Long-term nonprogressors", "Viremic controllers" and "Elite controllers" have a better chance with HIV than normal people do). Development of nanobots tailored to combat specific bacteria will also go a long way in helping us reduce the effects of the antibiotic apocalypse.
Nice article though, I really enjoyed it.
This is a well researched piece sir, more grease to your elbows.
Steem on!
You dey rep Naija!
Thanks @ememovic
Thanks for the information bro.
You are a rare gem sire.
Kudos! Fantastic work!
Lotta lessons learnt.
Thanks for the compliment @mimy
You did well to put this together.... @steemiteducation should take on this one for the fully loaded informative post
I think he already tagged them. Good thinking friend.
Nice research. Well personally many things happening around us today seems to be a biological disorder conciously align by few fir gains. World wont end to any... Wish i can say more...
This is an amazing and easy to comprehend analysis you have just given.
Yes boss. Thanks for stopping by
This is an excellent post. It is of course paramount to restate that bacterias are becoming resistant to antibiotics. A common practise that makes such viable is self medication and usage of incomplete dosage of medicines. When someone is on medication and refuses to complete the whole dosage as prescribed, there is high possibility of bacteria overcoming the eliminating effect of the drugs and thereby developing resistance to future treatment. I am guilty of such practises anyway. I dont like medicines. Thank you for sharing this with us @eurogee
You are very very rish in your submission
In your area they blame it on the magic of their enemies, in mine they blame it on vaccines. Unfortunately these yapping terriers of ignorance are endangering the rest of us.
Cg
Hello @cryptogee
Thanks for yoir observations