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Bacteria could soon become so resistant to antibiotics that common injuries or illnesses could eventually become life-threatening, the head of the World Health Organization (
WHO) warned during a conference of infectious disease experts on Friday.
According to
NewsCore reports, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan told those attending the meeting, which was held in Copenhagen, Denmark, that even ailments as simple as a scratched knee or a sore throat could someday become fatal.
Furthermore,
Daily Mail reporter Mario Ledwith writes that Chan believes that the Earth was quickly approaching what she referred to as the "post-antibiotic era."
As these disease-causing microbes become more and more resistant to the drugs meant to treat the conditions they cause, those injuries and illnesses will become increasingly harder to treat, thus making some "remedies more expensive, and some conditions... untreatable," Ledwith added. If this so-called post-antibiotic era does, in fact, happen, Chan said that it would result in the "end to modern medicine as we know it."
This "post-antibiotic era" would "include many of the breakthrough drugs developed to treat tuberculosis, malaria, bacterial infections and HIV/AIDS, as well as simple treatments for cuts," says Hannah Furness of
The Telegraph. Any medicines that would replace existing treatments would not only become more costly, but would also take longer in order to have similar affects as today's antibiotics.
