Superbugs: How drugs that cure you end up in rivers, soils

At 25, Vanessa Carter suffered a severe car crash in Johannesburg that destroyed bones on the right side of her face and required years of reconstructive surgeries. Six years later, she received a prosthetic implant to rebuild her cheekbone, but later developed pus and a persistent facial infection. She took antibiotics and saw doctors without receiving answers, while the bacterial infection continued damaging facial tissue for nearly a year. The infection was caused by MRSA, a methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strain against which many antibiotics no longer work. Antimicrobial resistance is identified as a major global health challenge, with projections of up to 10 million deaths per year by 2050. Misuse and overuse of antibiotics in healthcare and antibiotic pollution in the environment contribute to the spread of resistance, including through contaminated water affecting crops and food chains.

"“I was taking antibiotics, I was seeing my doctors, but nobody could give me answers,” she told DW. “And all this time this bacterial infection was basically eating away at the tissue on my face.”"

"The culprit, it turns out, was MRSA methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus one of a growing number of superbugs against which antibiotics have stopped working. A looming global crisis with 10 million deaths per year Antimicrobial resistance when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites evolve to defeat the drugs designed to kill them has been identified as a major global health challenge by the UN. By 2050, drug-resistant superbugs could claim 10 million lives annually."

"One reason behind their spread is the mis- or overuse of antibiotics in healthcare. Another is antibiotic pollution in the environment. “Perhaps you irrigate a crop with water that contains these bacteria. And then we consume the crop or perhaps we drink some water that contains these genes,” said Alistair Boxall, an environmental science professor at the UK's University of York."

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