Antibiotics may be sold at market stalls where people buy a few doses without a doctor's exam. In Vietnam in 1997, researchers found more than 70 percent of patients were prescribed inadequate doses to cure serious infections. Farm Use a Problem, Too Animals add to the problem. Half the world's antibiotics are used on the farm, sometimes to treat illness but mostly to help healthy animals grow bigger. That encourages drug-resistant germs that cause food poisoning, WHO said.
Nobody counts deaths from drug-resistant infections.
The CDC says 88,000 Americans a year die of infections they catch in the hospital, and many are resistant to at least one antibiotic, complicating treatment attempts. Wiser use of antimicrobial drugs is the solution, the WHO said. It recommended increased funding to help poor countries afford enough antibiotics, and education for poor and rich nations alike to avoid misuse. WHO also recommended that human antibiotics not be used as growth promoters for animals. Europe already has banned several such drugs.