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The antibiotics crisis isn’t the fault of science – it’s market failure
The WHO has warned of rising drug-resistant infections, and Singapore has just updated its action plan on this. But it cannot fight this alone.
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Most antibiotics today are derived from molecules produced by the microbes themselves in competition or collaboration with each other.
PHOTO: ST FILE
Hsu Li Yang
Dying from a bacterial infection after injuries sustained during an air raid in the Second World War, UK policeman Albert Alexander was the first person to be treated with penicillin.
Desperate doctors, who had already had to remove an eye, treated him with the antibiotic on Feb 12, 1941, and he rapidly recovered. However, the limited supply ran out, and he died – a reminder that antibiotics save lives only when we have them, and when they still work.
