WHO Will Save Us?

So not to panic anyone but everyone in the world is about to die. The World Health Organisation says unless we act now we could face a crisis which 'threatens the achievements of modern medicine'.

We've known for ages that microbes are becoming more resistant to antibiotics yet GPs continue to reach for the chemicals when trying to work out what's wrong with us. Sometimes its as if they pick from a hat until we stop complaining. All the while, animals we eat get pumped with medicine on a mass scale but the only thing we change about these products is the packaging.

Of course, this is hardly the first time microbes have threatened our species. Foot and mouth one minute, bird flu the next, pus in our cows' milk and thriving E Coli on the Underground, pandemics are as much of a constant in our lives as the DFS sale. Surprisingly though, this is the first time the WHO have even attempted to 'obtain an accurate picture of the magnitude of antimicrobial resistance'. Makes you wonder what they've been doing for 66 years.

Even now, they don't seem to have many practical solutions up their sleeve. Having gathered the most recent resistance surveillance from 22 of their 129 member states, along with stats here and there from a further 92 countries, the organisation have found themselves unable to compare or interpret the intelligence properly.

This makes the whole report very vague. They might as well have introduced WHOman, a masked superhero who shoots antibiotics at gloveless dinner ladies... 
"Fear not, fair maiden, for we are developing 'tools and standards for harmonised 
surveillance"

Of the dismal amount of information this report is based upon, most is from Europe and America. Good to know our government is always watching, right down to our microbes.