Question: Can Superbugs be fatal to people or animals, can they damage the environment?

Asked by horseyferret to Cindy, Katelin, Kate, Miranda, Yagiz on 13 Mar 2013. This question was also asked by trockstar1, dounutd, rjepic44, carrotgrace, lulu, jbhiss2000, chocolate9, paris4, ilovescience.

0

Keywords: ,

  1. Photo: Miranda WeenMiranda Ween
    answered on 13 Mar 2013:

    Superbugs can indeed be fatal to humans. It is not very common here in Australia where we have access to the strongest, but most expensive antibiotics which can still kill most superbugs (but some ARE developing resistance even to these) so doctors can usually treat a person if they know they are sick early enough and they are healthy enough.

    When one amimal on a farm gets a bacterial infection, farmers often give all of their animals antibiotics to prevent the others get sick. This is not a good thing, as when antibiotics are given without it being necessarym they can create resistant bacteria. The government is now trying to help farmers find ways to not do this anymore, but it is a hard habit to change. So it is mostly animals on famrs which get superbug infections.

    as for the environment, plants, especially crops have issues with drug resistant bacteria and insects too!

    1

Comments