When people use antibiotics wrong, a drug resistant microorganism is formed. This drug resistant bacteria is known as a superbug. Many people do not know what superbugs are or how powerful they are, they also do not know how many different kinds of superbugs there are, like Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA), Klebsiella Pneumonia(KPC), Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococci(VRE), and Norovirus, but there have been wonder drugs created to treat sicknesses; but the outcome of antibiotics vary greatly, people could use home remedies as an alternative to taking medicine especially since it is sometimes hard to decide if it is a bacteria or virus that is attacking a person’s body. There are many causes of resistance for intense hand sanitizers, over populated areas, and many other causes, preventing superbugs can be easy, but if someone does catch a superbug it can be a financial struggle because of all the expenses superbugs have been causing for a long time. Nevertheless, people should know what superbugs are and how to deal with them.
Since a person should know what a Superbug is, what are Superbugs? Superbugs are antibiotic resistant bacteria. Antibiotic resistance is when antibiotics are useless against the bacteria. When the antibiotics do not work anymore the infections are incurable. “If a bacterium carries several resistance genes, it is called multiresistant or, informally a “superbug.”” (Ingdahl Web). Therefore, by the time the bacteria is considered a superbug it is extremely powerful.
There are many different kinds of superbugs but they all have one thing in common, they like to share. “[…] resistance can spread between different species of bacteria […]” (Kingsland 37). The superbugs can multiply anywhere, on...
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...ursing homes have had to deal with superbugs for decades but more cases are arising as time goes on. Concluding superbugs have been an issue since people started using antibiotics, but resistance to antibiotics is spreading.
There are multiple ways humans have increased the amount of superbugs living today. People use medicine incorrectly. People use hand sanitizers. Also people come in contact with one another more often. All these increase the treat of superbugs spreading. Antibiotic Resistance creates a financial burden for those who get a superbug; it could even take their life. But there are precautions people can take to reduce the chance of getting superbugs. Concluding, superbugs are not a problem that humans want to increase for all the difficulties that they bring so people should use medicines wisely and should take precautions as much as possible.
Germaphobes beware: the next incurable global epidemic is already here and, to make matters worse, you may unknowingly come in daily contact with it. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, commonly known as MRSA, is the villain of Maryn McKenna’s book, a terrifying tale of the negative consequences of modern medicine. It’s the kind of book that keeps you awake at night, itching to read the next chapter- and worried you could become infected. Through vivid case studies and scary scientific evidence about what appears to be an unbeatable pathogen, McKenna’s book, Superbug, is one that will make you afraid to step foot in a hospital ever again.
According to USA Today, U.S. doctors are prescribing enough antibiotics to give to 4 out of 5 Americans every year, an alarming pace that suggests they are being excruciatingly overused. In fact, Dr. Aunna Pourang from MD states, “to give you an idea of how high the pressure is to prescribe antibiotics, I didn’t get a job once because during the interview I told the lead physician that I only prescribe antibiotic prescriptions when they are warranted.” The development and widespread obsession of antibiotics, or drugs that kill bacteria and thereby reduce infection, has helped billions of people live longer, healthier lives. Unfortunately, the more we rely on and abuse antibiotics, the more bacteria develop resistance to them, which makes treating infections that much more challenging and leads to the growth of drug-resistant strains of bacteria. Research from the Center of Disease Control found that two million people in the United States become infected with antibiotic resistant bacteria, while 23,000 people die from such infections each year. Americans often aren’t informed on the power of the human body and rush to assumptions when perfection isn’t present. In a nutshell, the obsession of antibiotics is quite deadly and needs to be addressed before it’s too
The Super Bug is a strain of bacteria that has become resistant to antibiotic drugs. This particular bacteria has become immune to any antibiotics or medicine. Because of this reason, this bacteria has become very difficult to treat. If this bacteria infects a human body, then it might cause serious health conditions and even death. This Superbug has evolved over the past years and has become even more dangerous.
Simple infections are no longer death sentences, however, immunities to these antibiotics are appearing. The use of antibiotics save lives by crippling the ability of bacteria to damage the human body, and antibodies act as a sidekick to the immune system when fighting off life-threatening illnesses. In “The Life of a Peasant”, William Stearns Davis (1922) focuses on what life would be like for the lowest tier of people in a feudalistic state, and he concluded that often in a world without antibiotics, people lose their lives to easily preventable medical conditions, regardless of whether they are a king or a peasant. Antibiotics are used to fight infections that could otherwise prove deadly. In a time before antibiotics, life was much more difficult for all involved. Before antibiotics were used, many died of simple cuts or scratches that later got infected. If action is not taken, superbugs could grow immune to all of the antibiotics we possess. Superbugs are becoming immune to the ways we fight them, which forecasts a world without the ability to fight these superbugs. In the article “Superbugs Causing Infections at a Tertiary Care Hospital and the Return of Pre-Antibiotic Era!” Kalyan Rajkumar (2016), associate professor of microbiology at King George 's Medical University, as well as his research team, discusses the prevalence of a strain of E. coli that is mostly immune to the majority of current
In our community right now, medical researchers are testing antibiotics that may have chemicals to disable the resistance of this organism. But while research continues, it is vital to be aware of how these deadly germs spread and what we can do to prevent them.
“The World Health Organization projects that as drug effectiveness decreases and antibiotic resistance increases, public education becomes more and more crucial” (476) Antibiotics were discovered in 1940 and since have been abused and misused. Between bad practices and lack of proper education antibiotic resistance has been allowed to occur. The only way to combat bacterial infections is with strong patient education and following the correct schedule in taking antibiotics.
Bacteria that is resistant to antibiotics is a major problem not only for the United States, but worldwide. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2012) the cause is related to “widespread overuse, as well as inappropriate use, of antibiotics that is fueling antibiotic resistance”. According to World Health Organization (2013) resistance is a global concern for several reasons; it impedes the control of infectious diseases, increases healthcare costs, and the death rate for patients with resistant bacterial infections is twice of those with non-resistant bacterial infections.
our everyday lives bacteria is constantly surrounding us, some of the bacterium that we encounter are beneficial to us but then there are the ones that are severely detrimental to our health. The way that they effect a persons body can differ from person to person. Many of the “microscopic foes” are very resilient and have a very fast reproduction rate. Not only do they reproduce quickly they sometimes seem to outsmart our immune system and not allow our bodies to fight the infection making it almost impossible to stop them. One thing that a lot if people rely on is the assistance of prescription drugs to get them better but even the drugs are not being effective and we can’t stop the pathogens from invading our personal places such as work, home, school, or anywhere. Even though modern medicine is advancing the pathogens could still get the get the best of us. The scary thing is we never know when the next pandemic or epidemic is going to arise. All it needs is some ordinary microbe to swap genes with a deadly germ to produce a “super pathogen” and it could happen to anyone, anywhere, as it did to Jeannie Brown who is from “our neck of the woods”.
Bacterial resistance to antibiotics has presented many problems in our society, including an increased chance of fatality due to infections that could have otherwise been treated with success. Antibiotics are used to treat bacterial infections, but overexposure to these drugs give the bacteria more opportunities to mutate, forming resistant strains. Through natural selection, those few mutated bacteria are able to survive treatments of antibiotics and then pass on their genes to other bacterial cells through lateral gene transfer (Zhaxybayeva, 2011). Once resistance builds in one patient, it is possible for the strain to be transmitted to others through improper hygiene and failure to isolate patients in hospitals.
Over the years humans have tried every possibility to overcome the health problems, spread of epidemics and infections, disease control and have worked towards a healthy society free of disease and health problems. They have succeeded to a great extent. The book “Good germs, bad germs” describes that though the life expectancy is now far more as it was in previous eras. Epidemic problems and infectious diseases are now getting lesser and lesser and humans are being treated successfully. The hygienic conditions have also been improved so as to ensure least growth of microbes, germs, parasites and bacteria. Antibiotics have been invented to address diseases and infections caused by bacteria and viruses. With all these substantial efforts the biologists, physicians and scientists have triggered another epidemic which is even more severe. They have killed those microbes and bacterial species which were human friendly and as a result of either their disruption or mutation, pathogenic bacteria have even become more active and resistant to treatments. This has led to increased ineffectiveness of antibiotic drugs, low immunity and various infections and inflammatory diseases. The chlorinated water for drinking and food processing along with excessive hygienic conditions indicates our fight against these bacteria and germs. Further, these antibiotics are even given to the livestock which becomes our food and as result many of their resistant germs end up in our digestive tract and other organs. Thus, the war against microbes through excessive cleanliness and use of antibiotics has resulted in antibiotic resistance among humans, which has become one of the prominent problems of medical science
In the last decade, the number of prescriptions for antibiotics has increases. Even though, antibiotics are helpful, an excess amount of antibiotics can be dangerous. Quite often antibiotics are wrongly prescribed to cure viruses when they are meant to target bacteria. Antibiotics are a type of medicine that is prone to kill microorganisms, or bacteria. By examining the PBS documentary Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria and the article “U.S. government taps GlaxoSmithKline for New Antibiotics” by Ben Hirschler as well as a few other articles can help depict the problem that is of doctors prescribing antibiotics wrongly or excessively, which can led to becoming harmful to the body.
Bibliography:.. References 1) Lewis, Ricki, “The Rise of Antibiotic-Resistant Infections”. Food and Drug Administration Publications. http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/795_antibio.html September, 1995. 2) Levy, S., Bittner, M., and Salyers, A. Ask the Experts about “Ask the Experts”.
Thesis: With the advent of antibiotics in 1929 Fleming said, "The time may come when penicillin can be bought by anyone in the shops.Then there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant."With the overuse of antibiotics today we have seen this very idea come to be.Over usage is caused most prevalently by a lack of education on the part of the patient.Thus stated, the way to overcome such a circumstance is to educate, not only the patient but also the physician.
Bacterial cells, like plant cells, are surrounded by a cell wall. However, bacterial cell walls are made up of polysaccharide chains linked to amino acids, while plant cell walls are made up of cellulose, which contains no amino acids. Many bacteria secrete a slimy capsule around the outside of the cell wall. The capsule provides additional protection for the cell. Many of the bacteria that cause diseases in animals are surrounded by a capsule. The capsule prevents the white blood cells and antibodies from destroying the invading bacterium. Inside the capsule and the cell wall is the cell membrane. In aerobic bacteria, the reactions of cellular respiration take place on fingerlike infoldings of the cell membrane. Ribosomes are scattered throughout the cytoplasm, and the DNA is generally found in the center of the cell. Many bacilli and spirilla have flagella, which are used for locomotion in water. A few types of bacteria that lack flagella move by gliding on a surface. However, the mechanism of this gliding motion is unknown. Most bacteria are aerobic, they require free oxygen to carry on cellular respiration. Some bacteria, called facultatibe anaerobes can live in either the presence or absence of free oxygen. They obtain energy either by aerobic respiration when oxygen is present or by fermentation when oxygen is absent. Still other bacteria cannot live in the presence of oxygen. These are called obligate anaerobes. Such bacteria obtain energy only fermentation. Through fermentation, different groups of bacteria produce a wide variety of organic compounds. Besides ethyl alcohol and lactic acid, bacterial fermentation can produce acetic acid, acetone, butyl alcohol, glycol, butyric acid, propionic acid, and methane, the main component of natural gas. Most bacteria are heterotrophic bacteria are either saprophytes or parasites. Saprophytes feed on the remains of dead plants and animals, and ordinarily do not cause disease. They release digestive enzymes onto the organic matter. The enzymes breakdown the large food molecules into smaller molecules, which are absorbed by the bacterial cells. Parasites live on or in living organisms, and may cause disease. A few types of bacteria are Autotrophic, they can synthesize the organic nutrients they require from inorganic substances. Autotrophic bacteria are either photosynthetic or Chemosynthetic. The photosynthetic bacteria contain chlorophyll that are different from the plant chlorophyll. In bacterial photosynthesis, hydrogen is obtained by the splitting of compounds other than water.
The Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) Program is an essential force maximizing quality, patient centered care, and safety throughout the Veterans Affairs North Texas Health Care System (VANTHCS). The VANTHCS “... is a progressive health care provider in the heart of Texas ... we serve more than 117,000 Veterans and deliver 1.4 million outpatient episodes of care each year to Veterans in 38 Texas counties and two counties in southern Oklahoma” (“VA North Texas,” 2016, para. 1). The purpose of the IPC Program is to guide a facility-wide approach toward identifying, preventing, controlling, and eliminating healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). This approach is facilitated through infection control (IC) practitioner’s role-modeling behaviors of assessing, supporting, guiding, and/or directing healthcare providers (HCPs) in the application of evidence-based practices (EBPs) to prevent HAIs. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), HAIs are often preventable adverse events that pose a major threat to patient safety (“Centers for Disease,” 2016). As a result, IC practitioners recognize the importance of preparing nurse faculty to engage clinical staff in the application of EBPs to prevent infections.