The Growing Global Threat Of Antibiotic Resistance Ielts Reading Answers __top__ -

The rise of "superbugs"—bacteria resistant to multiple types of antibiotics—threatens to make common infections fatal once again. Surgeries, chemotherapy, and organ transplants, which rely on prophylactic antibiotics, become high-risk procedures [1]. 5. Potential Solutions and Future Outlook Addressing this threat requires a multi-faceted approach:

– The passage explicitly calls for this in the final paragraph.

The core argument of the text isolates human behavior as the primary driver of this accelerating crisis. Common infections that were easily treatable a generation

The consequences are already measurable. Common infections that were easily treatable a generation ago now frequently require stronger, more expensive drugs, and in some cases no treatment works at all. The WHO’s latest surveillance report found that one in six laboratory‑confirmed bacterial infections in 2023 were resistant to the antibiotics normally used to treat them. Resistance rates vary enormously between regions: in South‑East Asia, one in three reported infections was resistant, compared to one in five in Africa. The gap is partly explained by weaker health systems, where diagnostic tools are scarce and antibiotics are often dispensed without prescription.

2. Colistin is effective against all resistant bacteria. This is a natural evolutionary process

10. Pharmaceutical companies avoided developing new antibiotics because a drug might be used for only ____. one week

In industrialized farming, massive quantities of antibiotics are administered to healthy livestock to promote growth and prevent disease in cramped conditions. These drugs enter the human food chain and the ecosystem through agricultural runoff. 4. The Economic and Social Fallout when a person takes an antibiotic

1. The Causes of Resistance (How we brought this upon ourselves)

The final section addresses the systemic bottleneck in pharmaceutical innovation. Developing new antibiotics is economically unviable for giant pharmaceutical companies; they offer a low return on investment compared to chronic disease medications because antibiotics are taken for short durations and must be held in reserve to prevent resistance. The text concludes with a call for global surveillance networks, stricter prescribing regulations, and alternative therapies like bacteriophage technology. High-Yield Vocabulary Bank

B. Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria evolve mechanisms to withstand the drugs designed to kill them. It is important to understand that it is the bacteria, not the host, that become resistant. This is a natural evolutionary process; when a person takes an antibiotic, sensitive bacteria are killed, but resistant germs may survive. These survivors then multiply, creating a new population of bacteria that the drug can no longer touch. While this mutation occurs naturally, the speed at which it is happening today is unprecedented, driven largely by human behaviour and the misuse of these vital medicines.

Most major pharmaceutical companies are currently increasing their budgets for antibiotic research. Questions 10–13