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Drug-resistant superbugs are killers, and the problem is getting worse even as people become aware of the need to control how we use antibiotics.

Researchers estimate close to five million people died in 2019 because of antibiotic-resistant bacteria alone. Yet, doctors continue to overprescribe these lifesaving drugs and farmers continue to give them to livestock and fish not only to treat and prevent disease but to help them grow faster.

Now, a team of experts has shown clear links between the use of antibiotics in people and in animals.

Kasim Allel of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and University College London and colleagues showed that the more antibiotics were used in people, the higher the rates of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in animals, and vice versa.

But overuse is not the only culprit.

Kasim’s team also found rates of antimicrobial resistance are worse in poorer countries. Sanitation and a lack of health care are both likely factors. Governments will have to do more to control antimicrobial resistance than simply limiting the use of these drugs.

Listen as Kasim explains the many different factors that are feeding the rise of drug-resistant superbugs.

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It was a real mystery. People showing up at hospitals and clinics across the US were infected with a rare and troubling strain of bacteria that was resistant to most of the drugs used to treat it. 

The strain itself had never been seen before. It was Pseudomonas aeruginosa, itself nothing rare. But this one carried a genetic change that allowed it to shake off the effects of even the strongest antibiotics usually used to treat it. Where had it come from? 

It took a good deal of detective work, but the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state health officials finally figured out the common source was eye drops. They tracked down a couple of brands of eye lubricants and contained the outbreak. 

Now they’re working to find out how this particular germ got into eye drops in the first place, and how it acquired the mutations that made it so impervious to treatment. And they’re working to make sure that it’s not still lurking in the bodies of unsuspecting people. 

Dr. Maroya Walters, a CDC epidemiologist and commander in the US Public Health Service, helped lead the investigation. In this episode of One World, One Health, Dr. Walters explains how the team tracked down the source of the unusual outbreak, and how it demonstrates that superbugs know no borders. 

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A walk in the woods can bring serenity and peace of mind. You can bring back souvenirs such as a beautiful leaf, or a pine cone. Sometimes your souvenir is less lovely - a tick. Dogs, cats, and even horses can suffer from tick bites and responsible pet owners regularly check their companions for these unwelcome parasites.

Ticks can carry and transmit bacteria, viruses, and parasites that cause Lyme disease, anaplasmosis, Powassan virus, babesiosis, and erlichiosis.

Climate change is making new regions more tick-friendly, which is bad news for people and animals.

Dr. Katie Clow is an Assistant Professor in One Health in the Department of Population Medicine at the Ontario Veterinary College at Canada’s University of Guelph. She’s working on better ways to track ticks and their spread. She’s also got a website with useful information about ticks for people and pet owners.

In this episode of One World, One Health, listen as Katie explains why people need to keep an eye out for ticks, why simply clearing wildlife such as deer won’t help control ticks, and how climate change is helping ticks thrive in more regions of the world.

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Consumption. The White Plague. Scrofula. Tuberculosis (TB) has been known by so many names over the ages, and those names reflect just how long it’s been around and just how misunderstood it’s been. It’s killed kings and generals, playwrights, and poets.

TB still sickens 10 million people every year and kills 1.5 million – even though it’s easily prevented and can be treated. It’s unusual because it needs to be treated even if the person infected has no symptoms at all.

And even though it’s an ancient disease, TB keeps evolving into new and ever more unpleasant forms. Now, multi-drug-resistant (MDR) TB infects half a million people around the world each year, according to the World Health Organization. A third of these MDR TB infections go undetected, and that means there are tens of millions of people who do not get the treatment they need and who can go on to infect others.

Dr. Jeffrey Tornheim has been studying ways to test people to quickly and easily tell if they’ve got a drug-resistant form of TB infection and need special medications to treat it right away. Quick information can help stop the spread of these dangerous forms of the infection and can ensure that patients and health professionals don’t waste time, money, and medicine with the wrong treatments.

 
In this episode of One World One Health, Dr. Tornheim, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, as well as at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, chats with host Maggie Fox about why TB is so hard to fight and how genomics can make that fight a little easier.

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Antimicrobial resistance – the emergence of new drug-resistant superbugs – is one of the top 10 global health threats, the World Health Organization says.

More than 700,000 people die each year from infections caused by drug-resistant microorganisms – which not only include antibiotic-resistant bacteria but also viruses, fungi, and parasites that can escape the effects of drugs designed to kill them.

Filmmaker Michael Wech illustrates the problem with a series of stories about real people in his documentary “The Silent Pandemic”.

In this episode of One World, One Health, listen as Michael explains why he’s so deeply interested in the danger of antimicrobial resistance and what he has found out about efforts to curb it.

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It was 1994, and a new virus was killing racehorses in Australia. Then it killed a horse trainer who was caring for his charges. The virus, called Hendra after the Brisbane suburb where it first surfaced, is a relative of the measles virus.

Hendra virus has been traced to large, furry bats known as flying foxes. While it doesn’t make the bats sick, they can spread it to animals such as horses, which can become very ill and die.

And there’s an interesting twist. Researchers led by Dr. Raina Plowright, a professor in the department of Public and Ecosystem Health at Cornell University, have found the bats only hang out around the horse farms when they’re hungry. The solution? Blooming trees.

It’s a perfect example of how climate change, animal health, and human health are linked.

In this episode of One World, One Health, listen as Dr. Plowright explains how she and colleagues solved a decades-old mystery and came up with a possible solution.

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Three full years into the COVID-19 pandemic and the world still doesn’t have a firm answer about where the virus came from.

People who have been studying coronaviruses and other viruses for decades say it’s overwhelmingly likely the SARS-CoV-2 virus came from animals, just as the 2002-2004 SARS virus did, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome or MERS virus did, as Ebola does, and as most influenza viruses do.

But there’s no smoking gun- no animal being sold for food that carries the virus and that could conceivably have been the source of the pandemic. And that makes people suspicious and leads to speculation that a laboratory leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China could have been the source.

Dr. Felicia Goodrum, professor of immunobiology at the University of Arizona and co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Virology, argues that the tone of the current debate is harmful and undermines trust in science.

“The result has fueled public confusion and, in many instances, ill-informed condemnation of virology. With this article, we seek to promote a return to rational discourse,” she and colleagues wrote in a recent commentary in the Journal of Virology.

“COVID-19 has cast a harsh light on the many cracks, fissures, and disparities in our public health system, and the inability to broadly come together to face a colossal crisis and focus on the needs of the most vulnerable,” they wrote.

Listen as Dr. Goodrum tells One World, One Health host Maggie Fox about what’s at stake.

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Just about everyone has had an unpleasant fungal encounter, usually something as simple as athlete’s foot, ringworm, or dandruff.

But fungal infections can become much more dangerous and even deadly, especially in people whose immune systems are damaged by another infection such as HIV, tuberculosis, or even COVID-19.

Mold species such as aspergillus are in the air all the time and when breathed in by someone whose immune system is damaged, they can cause an infection known as aspergillosis. Another infection, candida auris, spreads in hospitals and can kill. More than 300 million people have such infections and 1.5 million die from them, according to recent estimates.

In this episode, Dr. David Denning, a retired professor of infectious diseases, global health, and medical mycology at Wythenshawe Hospital and the University of Manchester, chats with One World, One Health host Maggie Fox about the threat of fungal diseases, especially as people alter their environments.

Denning is the founding president, executive director, and chief executive of Global Action For Fungal Infections (GAFFI), which focuses on the global impact of fungal disease.

Listen as Dr. Denning describes the need for new, resistance-busting medications to fight fungal infections, better testing to diagnose them, and better awareness of the threat.

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Helping someone less fortunate feels good, right?  But when people from rich countries show up in low- and middle-income countries dispensing goodwill and largesse, their efforts may, at best, be too little and, at worst, could do harm. Dr. Kirk Scirto, a family practice physician in Buffalo, New York, has devoted more than two decades to trying to help others through global health promotion and studying which methods are best for that work. 

What he’s found may surprise many people. In his book, Doing Global Health Work, he describes how he found it’s more important to listen to people than to try to tell them what to do. In some of the poorest parts of the world, he’s witnessed that people are perfectly able to help themselves and they have a better understanding of what they need than outside "do-gooders."

In this episode of One World, One Health, Dr. Scirto tells host Maggie Fox what he’s learned about suitcase medicine and voluntourism and how he’s working to help others make a positive impact without doing harm.

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When salty water seeps into a freshwater swamp, the resident alligators risk getting sick and have to fend off invading sharks. Can a monkey scientist and a pirate cat help solve the conflict?

Dr. Susannah Sandrin, Clinical Professor in Environmental Science & Science Education at Arizona State University helped make sure the science was sound in this episode of the cartoon series The Octonauts: Above & Beyond. It’s aimed at young children, but Sandrin says it’s important to communicate accurate science to everyone if people are ever to come to grips with the inevitable effects of climate change.

Plus, “Everyone responds to goofiness,” Susie says as she chats with One World, One Health host Maggie Fox about her work studying hydrology – the science of water – and studying how best to communicate climate science to kids and adults of all ages.