We need high-voltage infection prevention and management, not short-sighted overuse of antibiotics
As long as human behaviour and medical practices exert unpredictable effects on the microbial environment, infectious disease will continue to challenge and surprise us. Changes in host factors (eg, immunosuppression, hospitalisation), environment (eg, air travel, global warming), and adaptations of microbial pathogens (eg, HIV and severe acute respiratory syndrome [SARS]) can have unanticipated effects. Stated another way, microbial Darwinism is at play.
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Thomas Gottlieb is President of the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases. He has served on advisory boards for Novartis, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, bioMérieux and Janssen-Cilag. Bart Currie is a member of the Executive Council of the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases. David Looke is Vice-President of the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases.