Doctors are overusing antibiotics, they said, in part because more children than ever are showing up with infections, and their parents press hard for them to be given drugs. No quick and easy test exists that will tell if an infection is caused by a bacterium or a virus or, if it is bacterial, whether it is caused by a drug-resistant strain. People fail to take simple precautions like washing their hands, even in hospitals, or taking a full course of antibiotics so no bacteria survive to become resistant. Co. Doctors and dentists are not trained in how microbes grow to resist drugs, she added. The need is urgent, Hughes said.
Flu is a virus and thus antibiotics are useless against it.
But the bacterial infections that often develop in people who have flu were once easily treated. With the rise of drug-resistant forms, the next epidemic of flu could see serious complications, Hughes said.