FAQs

The Short: drug resistance means the infection is harder to treat, and this may seriously threaten recovery and even the patient’s life.

The Long: A drug resistant infection often means the infection is harder to treat, which may mean a lengthier treatment, more drugs, more side effects and worsening (sometimes life threatening) infection. Sometimes a drug resistant infection can interfere with the treatment of underlying diseases e.g. cancer (False Peak) or cystic fibrosis (Fight to Breathe) and even threaten life.

The Short: Everyone

The Long: Some people are more vulnerable to infection than others, but even ‘healthy’ people without underlying diseases can develop a resistant infection through everyday events, for example, a cut whilst gardening, a cat scratch, or occasionally a routine operation leads to a resistant infection.

Drug resistant infections can happen to any person at any time and the best way to guard against this is through mitigating the development of drug resistant bugs in the first place.

Antibiotics are used across medicine – from routine knee operations, or injuries that break the skin, Caesarean sections, transplants, burns, urinary tract infections (UTIs), or controlling infections in cancer patients who often lose their natural ability to fight infection due to chemotherapy.

Without them, many surgeries and treatments would be plunged back into the dark ages of a pre-antibiotic era when people died of seemingly minor scratches or grazes.¹

References:
1.Antibiotic Research UK, https://www.antibioticresearch.org.uk/ Accessed April 2024.

The Short :StoryBug aims to place the science around AMR in a real-life , accessible context with the focus on the human impact of AMR and antibiotic use by creating and sharing personal stories told by people who have either an experience of a resistant infection, or one related to antibiotic use.

It is easy to feel disconnected from AMR because it often happens to someone else, or seems to be a threat in the future, but in reality, in the UK alone there were 87,500 deaths involving bacterial infection in 2019. ¹

StoryBug aims to nurture a connection, an awareness – not to scaremonger – but so we can all use antibiotics more wisely and help ensure that we keep antibiotics working for those who really need them (and that might include you too).

The Long: By sharing the personal stories of individuals who have encounters with antibiotics, or who have first-hand experience of resistant infections, StoryBug wants to harness the energy of personal stories to help shape the mindset of reader, listener, or viewer and in doing so, enrich their engagement with this pressing issue.

In making these stories, StoryBug strives for authenticity and makes the storyteller – the person who has the experience – front and centre. The storyteller is the powerhouse that drives the story forward (effectively the protagonist of the tale).

The personal experiences of people who share their stories with StoryBug may take various forms including short videos (digital stories), audio or written text but they all relate to the experiences of real people.

Reference:
1. UK Government. Confronting antimicrobial resistance. 5-year National Action Plan 2024-29. May2024.

In 2019, globally, 1.3 million deaths were caused by antibiotic-resistant infections, and nearly 5 million associated with them.¹

If left unchecked, by 2050, this figure could rise to 10 million deaths annually.²

In 2019 there were an estimated 7,600 deaths directly from infections resistant to antibiotics in the UK, similar to the number of deaths in the UK due to stomach cancer.³

References:
1. Antimicrobial Resistance Collaborators. Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance in 2019: a systematic analysis. Lancet. 2022 Feb 12;399(10325):629-655. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(21)02724-0. Epub 2022 Jan 19. Erratum in: Lancet. 2022 Oct 1;400(10358):1102. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(21)02653-2. PMID: 35065702; PMCID: PMC8841637.
2. O’Neill J. Tackling drug-resistant infections globally: final report and recommendations. 2016; Wellcome Trust and HM UK government.
3. UK Government. Confronting antimicrobial resistance 2024 to 2029. 5-year National Action Plan 2024-29. May2024.

The Short: Antibiotics (and all antimicrobials) are amazing drugs that have transformed medicine and continue to save millions of lives and prevent serious illness each year. As a precious resource, we need to keep antibiotics working for those patients who really need them, who have no choice in using them (see False Peak and Fight to Breathe).

The Long: Antibiotics can be very effective drugs, reducing illness and saving lives, but they are victims of their own success, because the more antibiotics are used then the greater the chance the bacteria that they target will develop resistance.

Penicillin was the first antibiotic discovered in 1928 by Alexander Fleming and scaled up for mass production by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain in 1945.¹

So began the so-called golden era of antibiotics that last for around 20 years. After this there were many more natural antibiotics discovered followed by synthetic ones. Oblivious to the potential harms of resistance, many people in the 20th century considered them ‘cure-all’ drugs. Some people still consider antibiotics in this way.

But the more we use antibiotics for infections that don’t necessarily need them – usually non-serious, self-resolving minor infections, often viral coughs, colds, earaches and sore throats (antibiotics don’t work on viruses, only on bacteria) – then the more likely that bacteria living in and on our bodies or in our surroundings will develop resistance, and the more likely the drugs won’t work when we really need them to.

So, the actions of everyone in their choice to use antibiotics or not, drives the development of resistance and the availability of drugs that work.

And because drug resistance is a relevant threat to everyone – not just people who use antibiotics frequently – we all need to think seriously about how antibiotics and AMR fit into our lives.²

References:
1. Ligon BL. Sir Howard Walter Florey–the force behind the development of penicillin. Semin Pediatr Infect Dis. 2004 Apr;15(2):109-14. doi: 10.1053/j.spid.2004.04.001. PMID: 15185195.
2. https://antibioticguardian.com/keep-antibiotics-working/