If microbes no longer respond to substances that kill or inhibit them, the smallest infections could become deadly.
That is why Dr Matthew Dryden, lab specialist at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), says antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a huge concern.
He believes AMR is one of the biggest global health hazards that will hit the globe.
During an interview at Carpha Medical Microbiology Laboratory (CMML), Federation Park, Port of Spain, Dryden said the frequent use of antibiotics was making bacteria resistant to the drugs.
'The problem is we have no new classes of antibiotics. So in the not-too-distant future, relatively minor infections, like a wound infection, could spread. There's no antibiotic to treat them, and these things will become life-threatening.
'So these are a major risk to global health. And the countries that are going to suffer most from this are going to be developing, lower-and middle-income countries.'
As a result, the Caribbean Public Health Agency (Carpha) and UKHSA recently joined forces to create the Fleming Fund UKHSA/Carpha project, which was launched on January 14, in collaboration with the British High Commission, to deal with the considerable problem of AMR.
The project will develop AMR surveillance and testing in the region by strengthening laboratory capacity to improve detection and monitoring of resistant microorganisms, enhancing regional AMR surveillance, and providing workforce training and capacity-building initiatives.
Dr SueMin Nathaniel, acting head of Laboratory Services, Carpha said, 'AMR actually develops in a population of micro-organisms in individuals. So when a person gets sick and takes medicine, some of the bacteria tend to be killed off, but some become resistant due to mutation. And then the mutated bacteria could spread from one person to another or through environmental factors.'
Dr Lisa Indar, acting interim executive director at Carpha, said there was not much legislation in place so people overuse antibiotics, and put them in animal feed and in water as growth promoters for plants.
Dr Horace Cox, acting director of Surveillance, Disease Prevention and Control at Carpha spoke about some of the contributors to AMR.
He said irrational use could occur at the healthcare provider level as antibiotics were often prescribed without the doctor or pharmacist confirming exactly what illness the patient had. Then, there was self-medicating as, in some jurisdictions, antibiotics could be accessed over the counter.
'Persons self-medicate, they use a lot of antibiotics, and when you do check, the antibiotics are no longer effective in terms of addressing the micro-organisms that they're produced for.'
The quality of antibiotics is also a factor because, if microorganisms do not get the correct dosage, it contributes to resistance over time.
'We don't have enough data to see the scope of it at the moment, especially for the Caribbean region. But we know that it's something that exists, and it's because of the threat of it expanding beyond
