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 The development of Penicillin in the early 20th century has prevented thousands, even millions of people from dying of bacterial infections. As the century progressed, a wealth of better medicines led to stronger weapons against malaria, tuberculosis, and other communicable diseases. By the end of the millennium, new medicine meant that even HIV could become more of a chronic disease.
But if the world does not move now to preserve the ability to treat infectious diseases that played such a key part in increasing life expectancy and improving human health, the 21st century may see the reversal of that progress.
Infections caused by resistant microorganisms often fail to respond to conventional treatment, resulting in prolonged illness, greater risk of death and higher costs. For example, Tuberculosis strains resistant to Isoniazid and Rifampicin (multidrug-resistance — MDR-TB) require treatment courses that are much longer and less effective. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that there are about 6,30,000 MDR-TB cases in the world. The greatest challenge is that new resistance mechanisms have emerged, making the latest generation of antibiotics virtually ineffective.
Experts from WHO identified two major problems behind this resistance. First, people may have taken medicine unnecessarily or not as they should be taken. Second, the medicine have not always been top quality. The natural reaction of bacteria, viruses and other pathogens is to fight back against the medicines people take to get rid of them. If people do not take medicine long enough or if the drugs are not strong enough, resistant pathogens can survive and spread. This, in turn, means that people can remain ill longer and may be more likely to die.
Misuse of medicine in people is not the only problem, however. The development of antimicrobial resistance is also driven by widespread use of antibiotics in livestock to promote growth and prevent illness. The spread of antibiotic resistance in livestock contributes to the spread of resistance in humans through food-borne illness and other routes of infection. The spread of resistance is further exacerbated by travel and population movement, making it easier for drug-resistant forms of a disease to spread to more people, and from one location to another.
Conserving our existing anti-infective medicine is only one of many areas of action needed. The WHO is therefore recommended the following actions:
* Raising awareness of antimicrobial resistance so that more people involved in care-giving to both people and animals and in agriculture sectors can ensure that these medicines are used properly and appropriately.
* Providing guidance and technical expertise to improve infection prevention and control in health-care and community settings.
* Strengthen surveillance for early detection and their laboratory capacity for better, quicker analysis of drug resistance and its impact on the population.
* Collaborating with other organisations, academia, civil society and industries that can join efforts to tackle the antimicrobial resistance threat.

Source - The Daily Star