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Jose Aguilar
Writing 10
Professor Moberly
Research Paper
The Uncertainty of Antibiotics in the Future
Antibiotics have been around for less than a century and we have gone from
lifesaving medicine to bacteria mutating enough that even the best medication cannot
cure. This problem was not a surprise since bacteria’s natural process is to adapt to the
environment around them and survive. Now we are faced with a problem of having
antibiotic resistance bacteria evolve even further growing into gram negative bacteria. I
propose that we raise public awareness to educate people on the correct way to take
antibiotics and I also propose that we use better sanitation practices in hospitals to limit
the spread of antibiotic resistance bacteria.
Background/ Problem
The discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming was a turning point for medicine
because doctors could cure very dangerous infection in their patients. With the
introduction of penicillin bacteria started to evolve against the penicillin. This introduced
the world to the first antibiotic resistant bacteria. Antibiotic resistance bacteria are
bacteria that have evolved in order to resist antibiotics. The World Health Organization
(WHO) was the first major health organization to report on antibiotic resistant bacteria.
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WHO started keeping track of the antibiotic resistant bacteria movement and cases
since the early 1950’s. In the early 1990’s WHO reported that antibiotic resistant
bacteria was a “deadly force, moving across the developed and developing nations”
(WHO p.15). Since we have a threat to developed and developing nations this means
that we need to look for a way to fix the problem. One nation cannot fix the problem we
will need the cooperation of many different nations in order to defeat this problem.
This idea of antibiotic resistant bacteria was not a major or important problem
until it made its way into developed nations. “The nation with the largest cases of
antibiotic resistant bacteria is China followed by Kuwait and then the United States”
(Zhang, Wu). The United States is third on the list of countries with the most prevalent
antibiotic resistance bacteria cases which means that we are at a higher risk to catch
antibiotic resistance bacteria. Antibiotic resistant bacteria are prevalent in places like
hospitals and nursing homes where a person has a high chance of getting infected. The
infection can occur from not cleaning equipment the right way or not cleaning infected
hands with soap.
Antibiotic resistant bacteria first came into place because of the incorrect way of
taking antibiotics. The right way is to take the entire bottle of antibiotic in the correct
dosage every day at the same time in the day. The problem that occurs is when patients
stop taking the medication once the symptoms disappear. When the symptoms
disappear it doesn’t mean the bacteria were killed this just means that the medication
killed enough of the bacteria to the point it couldn’t cause the body any harm. What
happen next is that the bacteria starts to replicate again and the patient symptoms
come back. Then they start to retake the medication again. At this point the bacteria
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evolved to withstand the antibiotic causing the patient to take a stronger antibiotic. This
time though the patient knows that they need to take the whole bottle of the medication
and the bacteria dies as long as the patient did not make the same mistake. One other
way antibiotic resistant bacteria spreads is by patients asking doctors to prescribe
antibiotics to cure a virus. Antibiotics kill bacteria and not a virus and this causes
bacteria to grow stronger against an antibiotic because an antibiotic is not a drug that
kills all bacteria. This causes the bacteria that are not harmed by the antibiotic to fully
adapt against that medication.
In the US 1.7 million people acquired an infection while in the hospital. Of those
1.7 million people who were infected 99,000 people died from those infection (Nunez).
The antibiotic resistant bacteria that killed were gram negative bacteria. Gram negative
bacteria are bacteria that are immune to several types of antibiotics at the same time.
This causes hospitals to give you a cocktail of antibiotics. At first someone might be
giving a certain antibiotic and then within a week the gram negative bacteria has grown
immune to it. The hospital response to giving the patient a different antibiotic but then
the drug will also become infective. This is already happening in hospitals in the nation
with increasing cases happening every year (WHO. Pg22). If this not fixed then we will
start see people being scared of entering hospitals because of the risk of catching a
gram negative bacteria.
Gram negative can even enter through a small cut like ones from scraping your
knees from falling down and be caught outside hospitals. This is scary but it can happen
just like in the case of a girl named Addie. She was playing in a playground and scrap
her knee. Then the next day she wasn’t feeling well so her mother gave her ibuprofen.
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Addie still wasn’t feeling better and was taken to a hospital. It turns out the scrape knee
she got from the playground go infected with a gram negative bacteria. In the end Addie
died at the age of 11(PBS Frontline). Her mother couldn’t believe that her baby girl died
and this could have been avoided. This case showed that you didn’t need to be in a
hospital to get infected with a gram negative bacteria. A person can catch a gram
negative bacteria just by accidently being cut by a community used item. These are
parks, public toilets and any place where a lot of people go to on a daily basis.
People that survive the gram negative bacteria lost a lot of time because of the
time they spent in the hospital. If someone contracts antibiotic resistance bacteria it
takes several doctors with different displaces to observe one patient. It also takes many
nurses to watch over them injecting drugs into them, monitoring the machine, and
observing how the bacteria is spreading. A stay in the hospital to cure antibiotic
resistance bacteria takes weeks to cure. This means that if a patient spends weeks in
the hospital that means they took weeks off from school or work. This also makes the
medical bill high since the average US stay in a hospital is 1,300 dollars per day (Oh).
The only hope for paying off the hospital bill is that the insurance that a person has
covers it. If the insurance doesn’t cover the hospital stays then someone could be
expected to pay tens of thousands of dollars. Even if they did cover all the hospital
expensive that still means that a person needs to pay rent and will need to take out a
loan to pay for their house that month.
Solutions
The solutions to stopping the antibiotic resistance bacteria is to launch public
awareness about it. I believe that if people are informed about the dangers of not taking
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their medication on time they will be more than happy to correct their ways. A nurse can
talk to a patient that got prescribed antibiotics for fivve minutes and tell the patient why
they should take the medication every day around the same time. This should always
be done in person and not have the nurse susbitied by a piece of paper because the
patient will not read it. Talking to the patient in the most effective way because it is one
on one and the patient can ask question to the nurse on the spot. If it was given in a
paper form then they would not be able ask the paper questions. What can also happen
is that commercials start going on air on the television. In the Austria they ran
commercials on the television saying “have you taken your antibiotics today?” and also
saying “don’t forget to take your antibiotics.” During a seven year study they found that
once those commercials went on the air antibiotics resistance bacteria cases went down
(Gercek, Maieron, Straub, Wieninger, Mittermayer .13). If similar commercials were ran
around the world then we would see a drop in antibiotic resistance bacteria cases.
Many people will say that adults don’t needed to be babied about how to take
their medicine but it’s not babying the adults. Adults forget things because they are busy
people and a little reminder won’t hurt anyone. Other people might say that we should
just make new antibiotics to combat the bacteria. This seems like a good idea but
bacteria natural way is to evolve against medication. This would only make gram
negative bacteria into stronger gram negative bacteria. Also 4 of the 9 major
pharmaceuticals companies in the United States are still making antibiotics. It use to be
5 out of 9 major pharmaceuticals making antibiotics but Pfizer closed down their
research into gram negative bacteria because of financial reasons (Krans). The reasons
Pfizer closed down their research into gram negative antibiotics is because it takes 5
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billion dollars to make a single antibiotic (Krans). The reason is because not all the
antibiotics make it through the testing for human consumption. This is also a very time
consuming process. Since the year 1998 only 9 new antibiotics have been released to
be used by the public (WHO 21). What is even worse is that we haven’t made distance
classes of antibiotics since the late 1980’s (WHO 1).This means all the new antibiotics
that we have been creating are similar to one another. This means that are less
effective in treating an antibiotic resistance bacteria.
Let’s say that new antibiotics were being made and they were curing gram
negative bacteria infections. This would cause the gram negative bacteria to evolve
against it because we aren’t fixing the problem of public awareness. We need a public
awareness like the one they have in the UK. They engage the public with an awareness
day which is the 18 of November. They inform the public on that day of the risk of
infection and how to stop it. They go on air and show commercials and even on the
radio it is talk about (ECDC.) This is a way to engage the public and it seems to be
working.
In the hospital settings new cleaning techniques should be implicated. Since
once admitted to the hospital there is a chance of getting infected by breathing
machines and machines that do blood works. The bacteria linger in the tubes of the
breathing machines they should be made to be easily dismantled and then cleaned.
This will cause the bacteria to be eliminated from the breathing tubes and we would be
using a chemical to clean it the bacteria not the current method. The bacteria would
have no chance in evolving against the chemical cleaner since it never encountered
that. The way that breathing machine tubes are cleaned is by hot water and it takes a
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skilled worker into taking the tubes out of the machine and to put them back in. In the
new model the breathing machine tubes are easily taken apart and cleaned. This can
be done by an unskilled worker and the machine would be cleaned more often while
providing a cleaner machine to be used. People might say that the new machines cost
more and they do but they are smaller and do a better job than the older machines.
They would also reduce the chance of spreading an antibiotic resistance bacteria to a
patient. The machines would also be smaller so if the patient needs to be moved from
one room to another with a respirator then that job would become easier.
Conclusion
As shown by the girl named Addie this problem is not something that will not
happen it is already starting to happen. She was killed because of scraping her knee on
a playground. That could have been anyone kid that died from a scrap knee infection.
This is also a very expensive infection to cure and to cure it someone must spend
weeks in the hospital. This means that once someone gets back from the hospital they
have a lot of work to do for their job or school. This is also means that rent might be due
and since a person was in the hospital for so long they would need to take out a loan
just to pay rent. This problem will not go away on its own. We are seeing counties
stepping up and addressing this problem and now it’s time for our country to do the
same. We can stop cases like Addie from happening while also making hospitals stay
safer. With the public awareness campaign the effects of success should start to be
seen in the months after it’s implanted. This also one of it best features it’s easy to tell if
it working or if it isn’t. If it isn’t then we could change some things but I have high hopes
that this solution will be a success.
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Works Cited Page
WHO. "Antimicrobial Resistance Global Report and Surveillance."Apps.who.int. World
Health Organization, 12 June 2014. Web. 2 Apr. 2015.
Ruifang, Zhang, and Zeckhauser Wu. Antibiotic Resistance as a Global Threat:
Evidence from China, Kuwait and the United States. BioMed Central Ltd, 12
Oct. 12. 2006.
Nunez, Daniela. "Beware of Scary Superbugs in Your Hospital."SafePatientProject.org.
Consumer Union, 21 Oct. 2010. Web. 15 Apr. 17.
Young, Rick. "FRONTLINE." Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria. Dir. Rick Young. PBS.
Los Angles, California, 22 Oct. 2013. Television.
Oh, Jaimie. "Average Cost Per Inpatient Day Across 50 States in 2010." Becker
Hospital Review. N.p., 30 Apr. 2012. Web.
Conly, J. M. "Where Are All the New Antibiotics? The New Antibiotic Paradox." NCBO.
US National Library of Medicine, May-June 2005. Web. 3 Apr. 2015.
Metz-Gercek, Sigrid, Andreas Maieron, Reinhild Strauß, Peter Wieninger, Petra
Apfalter, and Helmut Mittermayer. "Ten Years of Antibiotic Consumption in
Ambulatory Care: Trends in Prescribing Practice and Antibiotic Resistance in
Austria." BMC Infectious Diseases 9.1 (2009): 61. Web.
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"European Antibiotic Awareness Day." NHS Choice. WHO, 12 Sept. 2013. Web. 12 Apr.
2015.
Krans, Brain. "The Decline of Antibiotic Development." Healthline. Healthline, 24 July
2015. Web. 18 Apr.
Krans, Brain. "Few New Drugs Why the Antibiotic Pipeline Is Running Dry."Healthline.
Healthline, 24 July 2014. Web. 15 Apr. 2015.
Ruifang, Zhang, and Zeckhauser Wu. Antibiotic Resistance as a Global Threat:
Evidence from China, Kuwait and the United States. BioMed Central Ltd, 12 Oct.
2006. Web.