We Found Penicillin. Then We Taught Bacteria How to Survive It

On September 28, 1928, Alexander Fleming noticed that mould had cleared bacteria from part of a culture plate.

Humanity had found penicillin.

Other scientists later turned that observation into medicine. We then behaved as though the miracle came with unlimited refills.

Antibiotics changed the meaning of an infected wound. They made surgery safer, protected vulnerable patients and rescued ordinary people from bacteria that once turned small injuries into funerals.

Then convenience began eating the gift.

We take antibiotics for illnesses they cannot treat. We change doses or stop treatment without medical advice. In places where diagnosis is scarce, guessing often arrives before testing. Hospitals, farms, pharmacies, prescribers, manufacturers and patients all add pressure to the same invisible classroom.

The pupils are bacteria.

Resistance is not bacteria becoming wicked. It is evolution doing its work. An antibiotic kills susceptible bacteria. The survivors carry useful defences, reproduce and spread. The medicine did not suddenly lose character. We trained its enemies.

The World Health Organization says bacterial antimicrobial resistance was associated with more than 4.7 million deaths in 2021. A major Lancet analysis forecasts 39.1 million deaths directly attributable to it between 2025 and 2050.

This is not a future apocalypse waiting politely at the gate. The bill is already inside the house.

The cruel part is that resistance punishes careful people too. One patient misuses an antibiotic; another later meets the organism it helped educate. Private carelessness becomes public inheritance. Bacteria have always understood globalisation better than governments.

The answer is not to fear antibiotics. A locked fire extinguisher is as foolish as an empty one.

We need faster diagnosis, cleaner hospitals, vaccination, sanitation, surveillance, better prescribing, responsible use in animals and new medicines. We also need the discipline to accept that a cough does not become bacterial merely because we are impatient.

Fleming found penicillin in a contaminated dish. He also warned that microbes could be made resistant when exposed to inadequate concentrations.

A miracle is not protected by gratitude. It is protected by stewardship.

The age of antibiotics did not end infection. It gave humanity leverage.

We are now spending that leverage as though bacteria do not keep records.

Abraham Ikongshul Ashindortiang

Sources:

World Health Organization: Antimicrobial resistance

The Lancet: Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance, 1990–2021, with forecasts to 2050

Nobel Prize: Sir Alexander Fleming — questions and answers