According to the World Health Organization (WHO), antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria become resistant to antibiotic medicines. In other words, the bacteria become more robust, making antibiotic drugs less effective and infections harder to treat. 

Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin antibiotics, identified the issue in December 1945 while accepting the Nobel Prize in Medicine. During his acceptance speech, he warned that “it’s not difficult to make microbes resistant to penicillin in the laboratory by exposing them to concentrations not sufficient to kill them…there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily under-dose himself and, by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug, make them resistant.”

The overuse – and sometimes abuse – of antibiotics has made this prediction a reality. Unfortunately, while many antibiotics were discovered and produced in the 20th century, the number of antimicrobial agents has decreased while antibiotic resistance has increased. 

As a result, pathogens such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and vancomycin-resistant enterococci have become lethal threats. In the United States alone, an estimated 2.8 million people contract infections resistant to regular antibiotics, causing over 35,000 deaths. The problem in Europe is similar in scope, causing approximately 33,000 deaths per annum.