Diseases resistant to antibiotics account for 2.5 million extra days in hospital and 25,000 deaths yearly in the EU – MEPs demand action.

EU must act to curb antibiotic resistance

Europeans spend an extra 2.5 million days  in hospital each year

and 25,000 die, all because of  resistance to antibiotics.

It’s not just the hospital superbugs: more  and more diseases are becoming resistant,

Some people expect to have an antibiotic  even if they have a virus.

It makes absolutely no sense because  antibiotics only work on bacteria.

Antibiotics are often given routinely  to farm animals to prevent infections

and they are then ingested by consumers.

I’m strongly in favour of a very, very  ambitious European programme

to limit the use of antibiotics in agriculture  but also for human beings.

Another problem is that for 40 years there’s  been too little research into new antibiotics.

For pharmaceutical companies  it’s not a profitable line of work.

You can’t make money out of developing  drugs to be used only as a last resort.

When we were giving them out like sweets,  money could be made from antibiotics.

Fewer young people today have  inoculations before travelling abroad,

and more of them are choosing to  travel more often and further.

They come back with multi-resistant  tuberculosis, pneumonia

and other very heavy-to-treat  diseases, polio and other things.

Nobody expects antimicrobial resistance  to be overcome quickly.

As fast as scientists develop new drugs, the  bacteria evolve new ways to survive them.

It’s an arms race the EU can’t afford to lose.