抗生素滥用论文 英文

Abuse of Antibiotics

【keywords】：Abuse Overuse of Antibiotics Public Health Crisis

【Introduction】

EVERY year 80,000 Chinese die from antibiotics abuse, making China one of the worst offenders in the world.

Statistics show that among the country's 15 best-selling medicines, 10 are antibiotics. More than 50 per cent of the medical expenses for Chinese in-patients goes to cover different kinds of antibiotics, while the figure in Western countries is just 15 to 30 per cent.

The side effects of antibiotics use can damage organs, cause disorders in the body's normal bacteria and increase the resistance of disease causing germs.

Many Chinese believe the myth that antibiotics can diminish inflammation, so they use them to treat everything from toothache to fever.

【the main text】

Before the discovery of antibiotics in the 1940s, millions of people died routinely of staphylococcus and streptococcus and more serious bacterial infections like meningitis, pneumonia and tuberculosis. But over the years, antibiotics have become less effective because some bacteria have developed ways to survive the medicines meant to kill or weaken them. VOA's Rosanne Skirble reports on how the overuse and abuse of antibiotics is creating a public health crisis and how some communities are responding to it.

Bacteria comprise about one-20th of our body weight. Most of these organisms are harmless, like those in the intestinal tract that help us to digest our food. Others can make us really sick. Streptococcus is a common bacteria found on the skin and in the nose, even in healthy people. But it can also cause acute respiratory illness, sinusitis, some ear infections and pneumonia.

Over the last 60 years, most serious bacterial infections have been treated with some type of penicillin-related antibiotic. Today penicillin is not as effective as it once was. Drug-resistant bacteria are to blame. We are all at risk of getting an untreatable infection because it is the bacteria and not the person that becomes resistant to antibiotics. And those bacteria can be spread by simple physical contact.

Antibiotic resistance is not new, but what is troubling is that the number of drug-resistant bacteria is growing at the same time that the drugs used to combat them are decreasing in potency and number.

A new study released by the Alliance Working for Antibiotic Resistance Education, better known as AWARE, tracks the effectiveness of penicillin against Streptococcus pneumonia, a common bacterial cause of meningitis, ear infections, pneumonia and sinusitis.