Antimicrobial Resistance: Misuse or Overuse of Antibiotics?

Author(s): Ewaoche Sunday Itodo, Andrew Nuhu Yashim

The effectiveness of antibiotics in treating infections in patients is declining as antibiotic-resistant bacteria become alarmingly powerful. We might be failing to understand the cliche that the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is caused by the overuse and abuse of antibiotics. The high cost of pharmaceuticals serves as an example of the failure of the current system. Over $5 billion is spent on one drug that takes about 15 years to develop. The process of creating new drugs is an open loop system that receives little input. This inefficient system creates medications that are only effective for a small subset of the target population while posing significant risks and side effects to the majority because drugs are not personalized. This problem cannot be solved by simply increasing R&D expenditure