The unexpected discovery of penicillin in 1928 led to the introduction of antibiotics into people’s lives. Since then, humankind has been giving a great credit to Alexander Fleming, the scientist who discovered penicillin. However, the misuse and overuse of antibiotics cause numerous adverse effects on people’s health on both an individual and global scale https://great-essays.com/.
Antimicrobial Resistance as the Effect of Antibiotic Overuse
One of the consequences of overusing antibiotics is antimicrobial resistance. Parents do not ponder much about the side-effects of this type of medicine when they want to relieve the pain that their child experiences because of various health issues, including otitis. A viral disease makes some individuals start taking antibiotics although they do not have much influence on the viral illnesses. Even though the use of antibiotics has prolonged the average lifespan by approximately 20 years, the overuse gave rise to the emergence of drug-resistant strains. As a result, human bodies are unable to withstand a disease with the help of antimicrobial drugs, because the body cells have become accustomed to the particular antibiotics. The potential solution to this problem may be the continuous development of new antibiotics that would fight against already resistant strains. However, pharmaceutical companies find this area unprofitable, so, currently, there are not enough producers. For this reason, the world is about to encounter the issue of antibiotic helplessness in the face of severe diseases.
Gut Flora and Antibiotic Overuse
Another negative impact of antimicrobial overuse is the elimination of salutary bacteria from the digestive system. When discussing intestinal flora in a human body, one should not forget that any human organism has both adverse and beneficial bacteria. When the use of antibiotics becomes a single alternative that can potentially cure a disease, doctors have no choice but to prescribe antibiotics. However, these drugs obliterate both aggressive and healthful bacteria. The absence of beneficial microbes in human bodies leads to the uncontrolled generation of the adverse ones and the development of other diseases. Since the intake of antimicrobial pharmaceuticals is not the only way how these drugs reach the human body, the issue of overusing antibiotics acquires enormous significance. Thus, antibiotics can additionally get to the human digestive system through the meat products from farm animals treated with antibiotics. Such multiple antimicrobial sources threaten both individual and global health, especially when the problem concerns water which is indispensable for people.
Water Pollution with Antibiotics is a Serious Challenge
Additional impact of overusing antibiotics is the pollution of waste waters. These drugs move through the human body and then effuse into drainage almost unchanged. Afterwards, the effluents either undergo the process of purification at the waste treatment plants (which is not always efficient) or get into the global water reservoirs. In either case, some amount of antimicrobial elements returns to the overall water circulation cycle and to human bodies respectively, which eventually develop resistance to antibiotics. In other words, some individuals are likely to become resistant to some antibiotics obtained from water even if they have never taken such drugs. Therefore, the direct effect of antibiotics on people is traceable, while the global impact implies the development of resistance to antibiotics in all humans who consume water with time. The latter issue is more complicated, and it requires the collaborative actions of the global community, namely strictly regulated antibiotic use and securing of access to antimicrobial drugs.
Antibiotics have proved their indispensability in the medical science. However, these drugs cause certain adverse effects which result from their overuse. To reduce the problems of the development of drug-resistant strains, intestinal flora imbalance, and global water pollution with antibiotics, people need to reduce the unsupervised intake of antimicrobial drugs. Moreover, healthcare providers should regulate and control the accessibility of such pharmaceuticals.
