Comment on Médecins Sans Frontiéres report on drug-resistant tuberculosis. Dr Simon Clarke says there is an urgent need for new antibiotics to keep pace with the disease
Release Date 17 March 2014
Dr Simon Clark, Associate Professor in Cellular Microbiology, has researched antibiotic resistence:
"TB was a major public health concern in the UK, prior to the introduction of antibiotics. It's much less common now but TB here remains high compared to the rest of Western Europe and is concentrated in people born in countries where infection is a much more serious problem. It is worrying that antibiotics' effectiveness is falling due to their overuse and the evolutionary pressure on bacteria to become resistant. Although disease caused by these strain remains rare in the UK, that could easily change and we should not overlook the threat that posed to our own healthcare system. There is an urgent need for new antibiotics to keep pace with the disease - development is woefully inadequate, public funding is limited and pharmaceutical firms are not investing."