(Image: https://www.istockphoto.com/photos/class=)Global outbreaks of illness can - as we saw with the Covid pandemic - happen seemingly overnight. But they can also be like a slow-motion car crash, which is how I describe the rising threat of antibiotic resistance.
READ MORE: Can we halt the march of the superbugs? Just as we're learning to live with Covid, experts warn antibiotic-resistant infections could soon cause more than 50,000 deaths a year in Britain alone - and see children die of coughs and chest infections
Take sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Diseases such as syphilis and gonorrhoea were once death sentences, but with penicillin's introduction as a medicine in the 1940s, they became easily treatable.
Before antibiotics, babies and mothers routinely died during or shortly after labour. It's already happening in Africa and South Asia where drug-resistant bugs are more common and access to rarer, polkadot official website more expensive antibiotics is limited. A return to this era is coming - there is no question about it.