Team:Sheffield/episode1

	ANTIBIOTIC HISTORY

How did we get to such a drastic point with antibiotics?

Professor Milton Wainwright an expert in the history of antibiotic resistance at the University of Sheffield spoke to us about how the power of antibiotics has become so diminished since its first use in clinical medicine.

As you can see from the timeline below, the development of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria does not take long from the release of a particular antibiotic. This highlights the importance of using what remaining antibiotics we have very wisely.

It is not an unreasonable assumptions to say that most people are aware that antibiotic resistance is linked the level of antibiotic consumption. Why do we overuse antibiotics then? Economics studies people’s behaviours under the constraint of scarce resource. We all face scarcity. Patients and doctors face the scarcity of antibiotics in terms of its effectiveness over the time. However, taking antibiotics in some cases does offer benefits, they have to make a decision on how much to consume. And as we have seen, we have consumed too much.

Economics should be able to offer a conceptual explanation to this phenomenon. We turned to an Economics lecturer at the University of Sheffield, Dr. Jolian McHardy.