WHO warns of threat of “superbugs”

The World Health Organization (WHO) warned this week that the level of resistance to drugs used to treat common infectious diseases is reaching crisis point.

If governments around the world do not make greater efforts to control disease and stem the spread of resistance there will be a return to the preantibiotic era and entire populations could be wiped our by “superbugs” for which no effective treatment exists, it said.

“We currently have effective medicines to cure almost every major infectious disease,” said Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, director general of the WHO. “But we risk losing these …