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. Poor nations can't afford more expensive alternatives and, to make matters worse, untreated gonorrhea is fueling spread of the AIDS virus. In Estonia, Latvia, and parts of Russia and China, more than 10 percent of tuberculosis patients have strains resistant to two powerful medicines. Overall, up to 2 percent of the world's 16 million TB sufferers have multi-drug resistant strains, particularly frightening because TB is airborne, spread when people cough.
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.