The world is in danger of a ‘post-antibiotic apocalypse’ unless more is done to tackle superbugs, the chief medical officer has warned.
Professor Dame Sally Davies said that if antibiotics lose their effectiveness it will spell ‘the end of modern medicine’.
Without the drugs, caesarean sections, cancer treatments and hip replacements would become incredibly ‘risky’, she stressed.
It is estimated that the rise of super-bugs will kill 10 million people each year by 2050, unless scientific breakthroughs are made immediately.
Dame Sally told the Press Association: ‘We really are facing, if we don’t take action now, a dreadful post-antibiotic apocalypse.
Professor Dame Sally Davies said that if antibiotics lose their effectiveness it will spell ‘the end of modern medicine’
‘I don’t want to say to my children that I didn’t do my best to protect them and their children.
‘Not to be able to effectively treat infections means that caesarean sections, hip replacements, modern surgery, is risky. Modern cancer treatment is risky and transplant medicine becomes a thing of the past.’
Health experts have previously warned that resistance to antimicrobial drugs could cause a bigger threat to mankind than cancer.
In recent years, the UK has led a drive to raise global awareness of the threat posed to modern medicine by antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
Repeated warnings
Dame Sally, who has repeatedly warned of the dangers of superbugs, said that because AMR is ‘hidden’, people ‘just let it pass’.
She has previously described the ‘catastrophic’ threat of superbugs as severe as terrorism and is on par with climate change.
Dame Sally Davies has also written to GPs warning that gonorrhoea, Britain’s second most common STI after chlamydia, could become an ‘untreatable disease’.
The comments come as the Government and the Wellcome Trust, along with others, have organised a ‘call to action’ meeting for health officials from around the globe.
At the meeting in Berlin, officials will also announce a new project which will map the spread of death and disease caused by drug-resistant ‘superbugs’.
‘A serious issue’
Dame Sally added: ‘This AMR is with us now, killing people. This is a serious issue that is with us now, causing deaths.
‘If it was anything else people would be up in arms about it. But because it is hidden they just let it pass.
‘It does not really have a “face” because most people who die of drug resistant infections, their families just think they died of an uncontrolled infection.
‘It will only get worse unless we take strong action everywhere across the globe.
‘We need some real work on the ground to make a difference or we risk the end of modern medicine.’
Superbugs: The facts
Around 700,000 people around the world die yearly due to drug-resistant infections including tuberculosis (TB), HIV and malaria.
For decades, antibiotics have been so overused by GPs and hospital staff that the bacteria have evolved to become resistant.
Doctors claim medicines including penicillin no longer work on sore throats, skin infections and more seriously, pneumonia.
In addition to existing drugs becoming less effective, there have only been one or two new antibiotics developed in the last 30 years.
In September the World Health Organisation warned that antibiotics are ‘running out’ as a report found a ‘serious lack’ of new drugs in the development pipeline.