Essay On Antibiotics On Recovery

Antibiotics have been critical in fighting bacteria-caused diseases for the past 60 years. Bacteria in the human body are able to reproduce at a rapid rate and this is a huge problem when the bacteria are disease-causing. Antibiotics are drugs that are able to stop bacterial growth, and kill off bacteria in living organisms.

Antibiotics have allowed recovery to take place in the immune system which often results in a full recovery.

Penicillin, the first antibiotic, was discovered accidentally by Sir Alexander Fleming in 1928. Sir Fleming was growing bacteria on agar plates and accidentally left one of the plates open. A mould started growing on this. Fleming noticed that no bacteria grew around the mould - it was the mould that killed bacteria, and was later called Penicillium notatum. Ten years later, Sir Howard Florey and Sir Ernst Chain discovered how to extract large amounts of the substance, named Penicillin.

A good example of the effectiveness of antibiotics on human recovery can be shown in a comparison between World War 1 and World War 2. In World War 1, the death rate of soldiers was very high, not only due to soldiers dying in straight-up combat, but also from wounds becoming infected by bacteria. Antibiotics were not invented then and there was therefore no cure for infected wounds, often resulting in soldiers dying a slow painful death, or having to have the infected part of the body amputated, which was also dangerous, as the amputation wound could become infected.

In World War 2, the death rate was still high, but many would argue that it was lower than World War 1 due to soldiers having access to antibiotics, especially Penicillin, and therefore being able to treat infected wounds.

Although antibiotics ...

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...antibiotics is a major cause of antibiotic-resistant bacteria forming and should be addressed thoroughly.

Organic farming is the right way forward in this field of preventing antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In an organic system, animals live in widespread areas and are given appropriate diets, resulting in a healthy environment where the risk of disease is less than a regular farming system. Growth-promoting drugs are also banned, and vaccinations are only used if completely necessary.

Luckily however, South Africa has the most active surveillance of antibiotic resistance of any other African country (SAMJ, 2011), so this country has a strong fighting-chance in stopping ‘the rise of the Superbug’. The South African government must take drastic measures in promoting effective antibiotic use as we cannot revert to a Pre-WW2 scenario of non-effective antibiotics!