Passing the Bug - The End of Antibiotics?
We are running out of antibiotics. The microbes are fighting back, they have developed resistance to our most powerful biological weapons - and they are invading our hospitals. Already, microbes resistant to the most powerful and most toxic antibiotic, Vancomycin, have sprung up in European and American hospitals. QUANTUM talks to patients who have lived the nightmare of fighting resistant infections in Australia. We look at the link between the use of antibiotics in animals and the rise of resistance in humans. QUANTUM will for the first time reveal the extent of the problem in Australia: how the number of infections is running at tens of thousands per year. It is a silent public health emergency. It may well be that, only 54 years after penicillin arrived to save us from scourges like tuberculosis and pneumonia, that we are now entering a world where we will have to do without antibiotics.