Antimicrobial resistance occurs when microbes - bacteria, fungi and other parasites - develop over time so that medicines that previously acted against them are no longer effective. As a result of drug resistance, infections spread and become more difficult to treat.

Overuse of antibiotics is a significant resistance factor. If the treatment is too short, or weak, or incorrectly matched in the treatment of infection, we risk leaving resistant microbes. The more we affect microbes with antimicrobials, the more opportunities we create to develop and increase resistance.

These factors often contribute to antibiotic resistance:

1) Overuse of antibiotics: Taking antibiotics when unnecessary contributes to antibiotic resistance. For example, most cases of pharyngitis (sore throat) are viral, so antibiotics will not help. Even bacterial ear infections often improve without antibiotics.

2) Misuse of antibiotics: bacteria use every opportunity to reproduce. If you forget to take your medication for a day (or a few days), stop treatment too soon, or use the wrong antibiotics, the bacteria begin to multiply. By multiplying, they can change (mutate). Mutated bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to drugs.

3) Use of antibiotics in agriculture: low-level antibiotics are regularly used for long periods of time even in healthy animals to prevent disease and promote livestock growth.

4) Spontaneous resistance: sometimes the genetic composition (DNA) of bacteria changes or mutates on its own. The antibiotic does not recognize this newly altered bacteria and cannot target it properly. Or the change helps bacteria fight the effects of medicines.

5) Resistance transmitted: you can pass a contagious drug-resistant bacterial infection to someone else. Now this person has an infection that does not respond to an antibiotic. Again, we can usually find treatment, but time has passed and now resistant bacteria can be harder to treat.

Remember! Antibiotics can only be prescribed by the doctor who examined you!