Tag: europe

You can take the brit out of Britain

But now I’m sat here in a beautiful Portuguese city, Porto, having just watched a beautiful orchestral performance literally outside my hotel, now sat in my hotel room with a cup of tea and a bag of twiglets. It’s a different kind of beautiful!

Had a really great flight over, although slightly delayed. And having spent half my budget on the taxi ride to the hotel (ok that may be a slight exaggeration, but it’s expensive!), I am now exhausted and think it’s time for some sleep!

From what I’ve seen this far however, Porto is a beautiful city. I hope I have some chance to get out and take a look in and around this conference! Its a busy schedule, and I am not extending my trip past Tuesday (which is when the conference ends), so will just be a busy few days no doubt!!
image

Resistance is futile

I wouldn’t say that I am an anxious person, or overly scared by things. But antimicrobial resistance is terrifying. The concept that we, as technically and medically advanced as we are, can even get to the stage whereby we don’t have any lines of defence against pathogenic organisms, genuinely frightens me.

I am fairly lucky. I have only ever had one course of antibiotics (which of course I completed!), but that doesn’t mean much. I may not be contributing to the overall issue of resistance directly, but as I type this, all over the world there are thousands of livestock being administered antibiotics to keep them healthy and infection free, there are people demanding antibiotics for their cold, there are people being prescribed antibiotics, but only taking half and feeling better then not bothering with the rest. These are the scenarios that scare me more than most. Now consider those that genuinely need antibiotics; those that have a severe infection (or not even severe, but an infection that they are struggling to fight), which, without a course of treatment, would mean substantial consequences.

I know it is all over the news, and the media have a tendency to hype things, but this is real. This is a very real situation with very real and dire consequences if we don’t do something about it. Luckily we have monitoring by the WHO and other international bodies, and masses of research going into discovering new antimicrobials, but this can be a slow and very expensive process. Resistance is happening now, and spreading.

It is somewhat reassuring however, that Horizon 2020 is here, part of which is a drive for the discovery and development of novel antimicrobial compounds or treatments. Eighty billion euros (that’s right,  €80Bn – so we need to remain in the EU!) worth of funding, to tackle a range of current questions. Hopefully this push will succeed and give us more time…because inevitable we will be in the same position one day..