“Each vial is a life”. This is the core belief of Navesta. As a company that specialises in antibiotics, bringing awareness on how to utilise the drug responsibly is imperative. Antibiotic resistance is one of the world’s most dire public health issues as antibiotics are heavily relied on in medical practices to cure simple infections as well as utilised in surgical procedures.
Antibiotics revolutionised medicine and have saved millions of lives, even extending the average life expectancy significantly since its discovery. The first true antibiotic (Penicillin) was discovered in 1928 by Alexander Fleming, a Professor of Bacteriology at St. Mary’s Hospital in London. Over 100 compounds have been discovered, however, since 1987, no new class of antibiotics has been found.
Scientists all over the world are in a race to find a new class of antibiotics, but the difficulty in this scavenger hunt comes from the fact that antibiotics are found in nature. In their essence, antibiotics are produced in nature by soil bacteria and fungi. Scientists physically go out into various places such as caves or the rainforest to attempt to uncover new chemical compounds which will kill or inhibit the growth of bacteria to curate a new class of antibiotics.
This race becomes more critical as antibiotics are not prescribed correctly and misused. When antibiotics are misused, the bacterial strain has a chance to cope with the antibiotic and become immune to it. Simple infections can turn deadly because of this. This resistance causes infections to last longer, illnesses to become more severe, and can result in more toxic medications to be prescribed to rid of the infection.
In some countries, antibiotics are widely available, even without a prescription. It’s vital that patients consult with a doctor before taking any type of antibiotics. Often, simple infections can be healed naturally by the body without any medicine. This enables the body to become stronger in the fight against invaders within the immune system and assists in the fight against antibiotic resistance.
