Antibiotic/antimicrobial stewardship

The first living things here on our earth were microorganisms, appearing almost four billion years ago. The earliest humans emerged from this microbial soup approximately 65 million years ago. Human beings are 90% bacterial DNA and only 10% human DNA. We live among and with and because of the microbes who established the framework for our physical existence. Microorganisms maintain our skin's protective barrier and facilitate our nutrient absorption. However, microbes have also evolved which live pathogenically off of the destruction of the human body.

On September 3, 1928, Alexander Fleming returned home from an August holiday to find a mold growing on one of the staphylococci culture plates that he had left stacked in the corner of his laboratory. He was astonished to discover that the colonies of staph immediately surrounding this mold were dead. He decided to grow the mold, part of the Penicillium family, in a pure culture to study it further. Interestingly he discovered that it produced a substance which killed a number of disease-causing bacteria. He named this ‘mold juice’ penicillin. However, soon thereafter his discovery Fleming also realised that bacteria previously destroyed by his penicillin developed resistance whenever too little was used or when it was used for too short a period of time. In his 1945 Nobel lecture he cautioned against the evil that would evolve unless