The Danger of Antimicrobial Resistance

In 2016, 700,000 people died because the microbes making them sick were resistant to the antibiotics they were given as treatment. By 2050, this number is expected to rise to 10 million deaths every single year. Antibiotic resistance is set to become more deadly than cancer.

One major problem in combatting antibiotic resistance is that many people do not understand what antibiotic resistance really is. It has NOTHING to do with your body’s ability to fight bugs, and everything to do with the bugs turning into superbugs, resistant to the medicine that you are taking to fight them off. Antibiotics have been the same for 60 years, allowing many bugs to build resistance to a set number of chemicals. There are two other major causes of this problem: that many antibiotics are overprescribed – around 30% of all prescribed antibiotics have been deemed unnecessary by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and that we give livestock 85% of the antibiotics that we produce. The microbes develop resistance from this unnecessary overuse.

The World Health Organization has said that we will soon be entering a “post-antibiotic era.” Just last month, a woman in Nevada died from an infection that was resistant to all 26 antibiotics available. An estimated 1 in 7 infections treated in the United States are resistant to at least one type of antibiotic.

How can we solve this problem? There is a simple solution: neem. When used as a natural livestock feed, neem acts as an antibiotic, preventing infection while providing the nutrients that animals need to grow, naturally! To save those 10 million people every year, you need to start demanding a change to sustainable, neem-based agriculture, now!