China’s reckless use of antibiotics in the health system and agricultural production is unleashing an explosion of drug resistant superbugs that endanger global health, according to leading scientists.
Chinese doctors routinely hand out multiple doses of antibiotics for simple maladies, like sore throats, and the country’s farmers’ excessive dependence on the drugs has tainted the food chain.
Studies in China show a ‘frightening’ increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as staphylococcus aureus bacteria, also known as MRSA.
There are warnings that new strains of antibiotic-resistant bugs will spread quickly through international air travel and international food sourcing.
“We have a lot of data from Chinese hospitals and it shows a very frightening picture of high-level antibiotic resistance,” said Dr Andreas Heddini of the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control. “Doctors are daily finding there is nothing they can do; even third and fourth-line antibiotics are not working.
“There is a real risk that globally we will return to a pre-antibiotic era of medicine, where we face a situation where a number of medical treatment options would no longer be there. What happens in China matters for the rest of the world.”
Associated Press, February 10, 2013
An outbreak of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) has been reported in Guangdong Province, China. It was discovered by Canada’s Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN), an electronic warning system that monitors and analyses internet media traffic, and is part of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Global Outbreak and Alert Response Network (GOARN). The disease comes on top of the problems caused by the violent earthquake that devastated the region two months ago. Members of worldwide aid agencies are still working in the area.
Guangdong Province previously suffered a SARS epidemic in 2002 although the Chinese Government did not inform WHO until four months later. It spread to 37 countries and there were 8,096 known infected cases and 774 fatalities. SARS is a viral disease that can initially be caught from palm civets, raccoon dogs, ferret badgers, domestic cats and bats. Initial symptoms are flu-like and may include lethargy, fever, coughs, sore throats and shortness of breath.
Les Knight, founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement
(As quoted in The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, Virgin Books)
‘No virus can ever get all six billion of us. A 99.99 per cent die-off would still leave 650,000 naturally immune survivors. Epidemics actually strengthen a species. In 50,000 years, we could easily be right back where we are now.’