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A New Zealand health expert is welcoming the World Health Organisation's recognition that antibiotics are becoming less effective at fighting diseases.
The director general of the World Health Organisation Dr Margaret Chan has issued a stark warning about the use of the treatments.
"The world is heading towards a post-antibiotic era in which many common infections will no longer have a cure and, will once again, kill unabated."
Kurt Krause from Otago University's Webster Centre for Infectious Diseases, is pleased the WHO is taking the issue seriously.
"Our antibiotics right now still do work and they will still work tomorrow but we're on a pathway where increasing resistance is going to render some antibiotics ineffective," he said on Breakfast on TV One.
"Right now around the world there's six or seven bacteria which are highly resistant to antibiotics and it's something that needs to be addressed now."
Krause said a number of other global medical agencies have been making the same warning for a while now, but says drug companies seem reluctant to develop new treatments.
He said around nine of the 12 major pharmaceuticals have shut down their antibiotic development programmes, and the US government has even begun offering incentives to the industry to reverse the trend.
"It takes 10 years to bring new antibiotics to market and the problem is bacteria are very adept at changing and becoming resistant to the current antibiotics we are using."
"It doesn't make good economic sense for big drug companies to develop antibiotics, it can cost a billion dollars to generate a new drug and if a bacteria becomes resistant then that economic investment is lost," he explained.
He said New Zealand is at a relatively low risk, with fewer antibiotic resistant bacteria than other countries, but he is keen for authorities to remain vigilant nonetheless.
"We're in an age of global travel," he said.
"New Zealand needs to maintain it's surveillance capabilities and diagnostic capabilities."
WHO says each country needs to strengthen surveillance of drug resistance and implement a national plan to combat it.
