Subscribe to one of our news e-mail lists . CNN's Jonathan Aiken explains the possible consequences. Better strategies for drug treatment needed WHO officials said poorly planned or haphazard use of medicines has caused drugs to lose effectiveness almost as quickly as scientists have been able to discover them.
Antimicrobial resistance can reduce the power of once life-saving medicines to that of a sugar pill.
But we risk losing these valuable drugs and our opportunity to eventually control many infectious diseases because of increasing antimicrobial resistance. In developing countries, resistance commonly stems from under-use of drugs, WHO officials said. For example, some patients may begin an antibiotic regimen, begin to feel better before finishing all of the medicine, then save the remaining tablets for another time because of high cost. Surviving microbes in the body are then able to build immunity to these drugs. In the United States, the situation stems from overuse.