If antibiotic use does not become more responsible,  antibiotics will eventually become useless, which "will mean the end of modern medicine as we know it," and "a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections will once again kill."

As drug-resistant infections become more prevalent, more and more people are now being treated with "last-resort" antibiotics, warns a new report by Public Health England, an agency within the British Department of Health.

The report also showed an increase in the number of people suffering a "significant antibiotic-resistant infection" between 2010 and 2014.

Antibiotic resistance develops as a natural consequence of antibiotic use. Because viruses are a diverse and ancient group of organisms, many of them have some degree of resistance to the chemicals used to kill them. When antibiotics are used, these naturally resistant organisms survive, while the vulnerable ones are killed.

The surviving bacteria then reproduce, passing on their resistance to the next generation. The more widely antibiotics are used, the more rapidly resistance genes spread through bacterial populations.

The problem is made even worse by the bacterial ability to swap genes with each other, even between species.
"Doctors need to treat antibiotics as a precious commodity,"