Among the many things people in industrialized countries today take for granted is that we will not die of a sore throat or infected scratch from a rosebush. Almost every major infectious disease is becoming resistant to available medicine, and scientists are not developing new medicines fast enough to keep up. The W.H.O. warns that we cannot count on new drugs being developed, and so must preserve the currently available antimicrobials by ending our misuse of them.
Drugs lose effectiveness because the microbes they fight become resistant.
This natural process has been greatly accelerated by human misuse of medicine. In poor countries, according to the W.H.O., the biggest problem is that people underuse drugs. They cannot afford a complete course of treatment, or take weaker and cheaper counterfeit drugs. This kills off only the susceptible forms of the microbes, allowing the more resistant versions to remain and dominate. In wealthy countries, the problem is the opposite.