When the first antibiotics were introduced in the 1940s, they were hailed as “wonder drugs”, the miracles of modern medicine. And rightly so. Widespread infections that killed many millions of people every year could now be cured. Major diseases, like syphilis, gonorrhoea, leprosy, and tuberculosis, lost much of their sting. The risk of death from something so common as strep throat or a child’s scratched knee virtually vanished.
抗生素于上個世紀40年代首次現身時,被人們驚呼為“神藥”,是現代醫學的奇跡。情況也的確如此。曾經每年奪去數百萬人生命的廣泛存在的感染,現在得以治愈。梅毒、淋病、麻風和結核等主要疾病失去了鋒芒。鏈球菌性咽喉炎或孩子劃傷腿等常見病患造成死亡的風險基本上已不復存在。
The powerful impact of these medicines sparked a revolution in the discovery of new drugs. The human condition took a dramatic turn for the better, with significant jumps in life expectancy.
這些藥物的巨大影響引發了一場發現新藥的革命。人類的狀況得到了極大好轉,期望壽命有了顯著提高。
The message on this World Health Day is loud and clear. The world is on the brink of losing these miracle cures.
今年世界衛生日傳達的信息清晰而響亮:世界即將失去這些神藥。
The emergence and spread of drug-resistant pathogens has accelerated. More and more essential medicines are failing. The therapeutic arsenal is shrinking. The speed with which these drugs are being lost far outpaces the development of replacement drugs. In fact, the R&D pipeline for new antimicrobials has practically run dry.
耐藥病原體已經加速出現和蔓延。越來越多人們必需的藥物正在失效。可供選擇的治療手段日益減少。我們失去這些藥物的速度遠遠超過其替代藥物的開發速度。新抗菌劑的研發線事實上已日趨枯竭。
The implications are equally clear. In the absence of urgent corrective and protective actions, the world is heading towards a post-antibiotic era, in which many common infections will no longer have a cure and, once again, kill unabated. The implications go beyond a resurgence of deadly infections to threaten many other life-saving and life-prolonging interventions, like cancer treatments, sophisticated surgical operations, and organ transplantations. With hospitals now the hotbeds for highly-resistant pathogens, such procedures become hazardous.
其影響同樣不言而喻。如不采取緊急的糾正和預防行動,世界將進入后抗生素時代,許多常見感染將不再有藥可醫,死亡將再次有增無減。其影響不僅僅是致命感染會卷土重來,還會威脅到其他許多挽救和延長生命的干預措施,如癌癥治療、復雜的外科手術、器官移植等。隨著醫院現在成了高度耐藥病原體的溫床,上述操作也變得風險重重。
While hospital “superbugs” make the biggest headlines, these especially deadly pathogens are just the extreme expression of a much broader, and more disturbing picture.
醫院的“超級病菌”成了最引人注目的新聞,但這些致死性極強的病原體只是更大規模、更令人不安情況的冰山一角。
The development of resistance is a natural biological process that will occur, sooner or later, with every drug. The use of any antimicrobial for any infection, in any dose, and over any time period, forces microbes to either adapt or die in a phenomenon known as “selective pressure”. The microbes which adapt and survive carry genes for resistance, which can be passed on from one person to another and rapidly spread around the world.
出現耐藥是每種藥物遲早都會發生的自然生物過程。針對某種感染使用某一劑量的某種抗菌劑一段時間,會迫使微生物或是適應,或是死亡;這種現象稱為“選擇壓力”。適應并存活下來的微生物攜帶耐藥基因,可以從一個人傳給另一個人,并在世界上快速蔓延開來。