Catastrophic pandemics such as COVID- 19 often lead to conspiracy theories as to why some people are more easily prone to infections than others. While individual immune systems do determine a person’s capacity to overcome an infection, the discovery of antimicrobials greatly improves the capacity to fight infectious agents. However there is a natural phenomenon of antimicrobial resistance which exists. This is the fact that microorganisms such as bacteria mutate over time and, they develop resistance to medications which previously could worked against them. This resistance is what is known as antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
Antimicrobial resistance is broad to include all pathogens such as bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites while antibiotic resistance is specific to medicines which are used against bacteria.
While antimicrobial resistance is a natural process, over use and misuse of drugs can accelerate the rate at which microorganisms develop resistance. This entails that when the human being or animal falls sick, they may not respond accordingly to the antibiotic treatment because the bacteria has developed resistance. Thus abuse of antibiotics such as self-prescription; not finishing a course of antibiotics; sharing a course of antibiotics are some of the leading ways in which human beings are causing antimicrobial resistance in humans or livestock.
