We’re returning to an age when a cut, childbirth or an STI could be fatal, writes surgeon MR DAVID SWEETNAM

Global outbreaks of illness can – as we saw with the Covid pandemic – happen seemingly overnight. But they can also be like a slow-motion car crash, which is how I describe the rising threat of antibiotic resistance.

And at this very moment we’re skidding out of control.

Take sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Diseases such as syphilis and gonorrhoea were once death sentences, but with penicillin’s introduction as a medicine in the 1940s, they became easily treatable.

Today, sexual health clinics are filled with patients suffering drug-resistant STIs triggered by the overuse of antibiotics. 

By 2040 we may begin to see people in the UK dying from these infections. The same is true for common bugs that are picked up during childbirth.

Before antibiotics, babies and mothers routinely died during or shortly after labour. A return to this era is coming – there is no question about it. It’s already happening in Africa and South Asia where drug-resistant bugs are more common and access to rarer, more expensive antibiotics is limited. 

We live in a global village and NHS patients will also suffer the same fate in time.

The worrying truth is that not nearly enough research is being done to find new alternatives. 

Governments, drug firms and research centres, such as the INEOS Oxford Institute, are working together to develop new antibiotics, but the reality is that it takes more than ten years to develop just one new drug safe for human consumption. 

We must also limit the number of antibiotics used in farming. Currently 75 per cent of all human antibiotics are given to livestock to keep them healthy.

But this will only buy us some breathing space to find more long-term solutions. Antibiotic resistance is inevitable, and we need a new way to protect ourselves from bacteria. 

With the help of artificial intelligence and futuristic technology, such as genetically engineered viruses which can attack disease-causing bacteria, we can fight back.

The need for new treatments is clear. Unless drastic action is taken, we face a return to the pre-antibiotic era where an infected blister, a small cut or a urinary infection can prove fatal.