For some infections there is only one effective antibiotic left to treat them (Picture: Getty)

The world is facing an apocalyptic threat from resistant superbugs which is more serious than global warming, Britain’s top health official has said.

For some infections, such as gonorrhoea, there is only one effective antibiotic left to treat them, chief medical officer Prof Dame Sally Davies told MPs.

There are few new treatments on the horizon and the situation is so grave it should be considered a civil emergency, she told a Commons committee.

Prof Davies said: ‘It is clear that we might not ever see global warming. But the apocalyptic scenario is that when I need a new hip in 20 years, I’ll die from a routine infection because we’ve run out of antibiotics.’


Warning: Prof Dame Sally Davies (Picture: Getty)

The widespread use of antibiotics from the 1940s has transformed modern healthcare.



But doctors have long been warning that bacteria are becoming immune to 21st century medicines, creating superbugs such as MRSA, as well as strains of E. coli, tuberculosis and gonorrhoea.

Prof Davies described the production of new antibiotics as ‘an empty pipeline’ so patients would die from once treatable infections.

Microbiologist Prof Laura Piddock told Metro doctors should resist pressure to give out antibiotics. ‘We’re really only keeping the wolf from the door while we wait for new drugs,’ she added.

Bacteria are becoming immune to 21st century medicines (Picture: Getty)

When the drugs don’t work, what can we do?

Antibiotics have been one of the greatest success stories in medicine. But when drugs cease to work, doctors face a monumental battle to stem infection.

Scientists in the US resorted to tracking the DNA of a lethal strain of bacteria – klebsiella pneumoniae – after drugs and tight quarantine procedures failed to stop a superbug spreading rapidly in a hospital.

Eleven people died after a woman with the bug was admitted to the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, in Maryland, in 2011. It was only when computer analyst Evan Snitkin, 31, sequenced the bacteria – like a family tree – to see how it spread, that doctors beat the outbreak.

Harnessing viruses that kill bacteria may also be a cure.