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Episode details

World Service,25 Oct 2016,23 mins

How Do We Fix Antibiotics?

The Inquiry

Available for over a year

By 2050, experts predict that drug-resistant infections will kill one person every three seconds unless the world’s governments take drastic steps now. But given the complexity of antibiotics resistance, what should their plan be? Some of the possible fixes involve changing ingrained human behaviours such as doctors’ prescribing habits and the intensive farming of animals. But other promising solutions to avert a post-antibiotics apocalypse come from surprising sources. Scientists are now hunting for undiscovered fungi in the world’s most remote places while other researchers stay in the lab deciphering the language of bacteria. (Photo: A depiction of some EHEC bacteria Credit: HZI/Getty Images)

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