12 Mar 2021 / 08:36 H. Professor Sadequr Rahman, Director of the Tropical Medicine and Biology Research Platform at Monash University Malaysia.
BEFORE leaving the hospital or clinic, we are often told to finish taking a prescribed course of antibiotics recommended by the doctor. However, when we start feeling better, many of us stop antibiotic treatment early, which encourages bacteria to develop antibiotic resistance. Stopping antibiotics too soon is one cause of antibiotic resistance. Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria no longer respond to the antibiotics produced to kill them. ‘Germs’ are not killed and continue to grow.
Antibiotic resistance is a global predicament that many of us could face in real-life. Due to antibiotic resistance, we may become infected with germs that cannot be killed by any drugs available. The result could be that the germs end up killing us - a situation faced by our ancestors more than a hundred years ago.