Superbugs ‘the biggest public health challenge’ facing globe
Infectious disease researchers Eric Brown, left, and Gerry Wright are being called upon to national media to comment on Tuesday's auditor general report, which warns that Canada isn't doing enough to combat antimicrobial resistance.
Media across the country are turning to two McMaster experts to discuss how the country can better tackle the problem of antimicrobial resistance.
Reporters from coast to coast have called upon infectious disease researchers Gerry Wright and Eric Brown to comment on Tuesday’s report from Canada’s auditor general.
The report warns that the country is not doing enough to combat antimicrobial resistance.
“I think this is the biggest public health challenge that the entire globe faces in the 21st century,” Wright, director of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research, told the Toronto Star.
“Antibiotics underpin all of modern medicine. Not just direct treatments of infections but all the things we take for granted, from open heart surgery to cancer chemotherapy to taking care of pre-term infants. We are in a serious jam.”
Brown, a Canada Research Chair in microbial chemical biology, warned the Canadian Press about the dangers of using antibiotics as growth promoters in animal feed.
“We should just stop using antibiotics in animal feed. If that’s the only way we can industrially farm, maybe we need some innovation in farming,” he said.
The pair were featured in media outlets across the country, including the Vancouver Sun, the Calgary Herald, the Edmonton Journal, the Winnipeg Free Press, the Toronto Star, CTV, CBC, the Ottawa Citizen and the Montreal Gazette.
Gerry Wright on what the world would be like without effective antibiotics:
Eric Brown, interviewed last month at the Keystone Conference on antimicrobial resistance:
