MIMS highlights World Antimicrobial Awareness Week 2021
Text written by Nóra Lehotai.
This year, the motto of the World Health Organization (WHO) for the World Antimicrobial Awareness Week, celebrated each year between 18-24 November, is “Spread Awareness, Stop Resistance”.
Antimicrobials do wonders. We have antiviral, antibiotic and antifungal drugs and vaccines available. They protect against or cure infections which otherwise might prove to be deadly for humans, animals and plants. Penicillins and tetracyclines, some of the most commonly used antibiotics, save millions of lives every year. The discovery of antimicrobials revolutionized not only medicine but our food supply as well. However, with their use, especially misuse, we awoke the defense machinery of these microbes and they learned how to adapt to these agents. Another important problem is that we only have antiviral drugs against a few of all viruses that cause diseases in humans. We lack antiviral drugs against many hundreds of viruses that cause diseases in humans.
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