If people do not stop misusing antibiotics, new "superbugs" that resist all drugs could take the world back to the time when minor infections killed, the World Health Organisation said on Monday.

But the WHO also recommended that antibiotics be used more widely than ever to treat diseases that need to be fought with the powerful drugs.

"We must take urgent measures to turn back the threat of infectious disease," Dr. David Heymann, executive director for communicable diseases at WHO, told a news conference.

"We are here today to call on the world to mobilise a massive effort to make better use of these powerful weapons before the window of opportunity closes and before we move further towards the pre-antibiotic age."

Doctors and health officials have been warning for years that bacteria are developing resistance to even the strongest antibiotics.

Because they are so numerous and multiply so quickly, a few bacteria or viruses can survive almost any medical assault and, as in the old adage, that which does not kill them makes them stronger. Microbes with a slight tendency to resist the antibiotic survive and pass on their genes. Over time, forms evolve that are fully resistant.

If a patient does not take a full course of drugs to wipe out all the infectious bugs, resistance develops even more quickly. If people use antibiotics when they do not need them, such as when a person demands antibiotics to treat a viral infection such as influenza, the bacteria naturally present in their body develop resistance and can be spread.

"In many instances, poorly planned or haphazard use of medicines has caused the world to lose these drugs as quickly as scientists have discovered them," the organisation said in a statement accompanying its annual report on infectious disease.

All major infectious diseases are becoming resistant to drugs, the WHO report said. "In Estonia, Latvia and parts of Russia and China, over 10 percent of tuberculosis patients have strains resistant to the two most powerful TB medicines," it added.

"Because of resistance, Thailand has completely lost the means of using three of the most common anti-malaria drugs. Approximately 30 percent of patients taking lamivudine -- a drug recently developed to treat hepatitis B -- show resistance to therapy after the first year of treatment."

WHO said it was proposing that the United States lead an effort to spend more on drugs to fight infectious disease around the world.

"We need to use antimicrobials wisely," Heymann said.

Gonorrhea was once easily treated with cheap penicillin, Heymann said. But poor countries did not treat victims and now 60 percent of gonorrheal infections are resistant to multiple drugs and must be treated with expensive quinolone drugs at $5 to $6 a dose.

WHO analysed the costs of cutting in half the death rate from five diseases -- pneumonia, diarrhoea, AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. "WHO estimates that with $15 billion over the next 10 years, we could decrease mortality from these diseases by 50 percent," Heymann said.

The Global Health Council, which took part in the news conference, suggested that the U.S. double annual spending on global health from $1 billion a year to $2 billion to kick-start this process.

(From China Daily)