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When the first antibiotics were introduced in the 1940s, they were hailed as “wonder drugs”, the miracles of modern medicine. And rightly so. Widespread infections that killed many millions of people every year could now be cured. Major diseases, like syphilis, gonorrhoea, leprosy, and tuberculosis, lost much of their sting. The risk of death from something so common as strep throat or a child’s scratched knee virtually vanished.
抗生素于上个世纪40年代首次现身时，被人们惊呼为“神药”，是现代医学的奇迹。情况也的确如此。曾经每年夺去数百万人生命的广泛存在的感染，现在得以治愈。梅毒、淋病、麻风和结核等主要疾病失去了锋芒。链球菌性咽喉炎或孩子划伤腿等常见病患造成死亡的风险基本上已不复存在。
The powerful impact of these medicines sparked a revolution in the discovery of new drugs. The human condition took a dramatic turn for the better, with significant jumps in life expectancy.
这些药物的巨大影响引发了一场发现新药的革命。人类的状况得到了极大好转，期望寿命有了显著提高。
The message on this World Health Day is loud and clear. The world is on the brink of losing these miracle cures.
今年世界卫生日传达的信息清晰而响亮：世界即将失去这些神药。
The emergence and spread of drug-resistant pathogens has accelerated. More and more essential medicines are failing. The therapeutic arsenal is shrinking. The speed with which these drugs are being lost far outpaces the development of replacement drugs. In fact, the R&D pipeline for new antimicrobials has practically run dry.
耐药病原体已经加速出现和蔓延。越来越多人们必需的药物正在失效。可供选择的治疗手段日益减少。我们失去这些药物的速度远远超过其替代药物的开发速度。新抗菌剂的研发线事实上已日趋枯竭。
The implications are equally clear. In the absence of urgent corrective and protective actions, the world is heading towards a post-antibiotic era, in which many common infections will no longer have a cure and, once again, kill unabated. The implications go beyond a resurgence of deadly infections to threaten many other life-saving and life-prolonging interventions, like cancer treatments, sophisticated surgical operations, and organ transplantations. With hospitals now the hotbeds for highly-resistant pathogens, such procedures become hazardous.
其影响同样不言而喻。如不采取紧急的纠正和预防行动，世界将进入后抗生素时代，许多常见感染将不再有药可医，死亡将再次有增无减。其影响不仅仅是致命感染会卷土重来，还会威胁到其他许多挽救和延长生命的干预措施，如癌症治疗、复杂的外科手术、器官移植等。随着医院现在成了高度耐药病原体的温床，上述操作也变得风险重重。
While hospital “superbugs” make the biggest headlines, these especially deadly pathogens are just the extreme expression of a much broader, and more disturbing picture.
医院的“超级病菌”成了最引人注目的新闻，但这些致死性极强的病原体只是更大规模、更令人不安情况的冰山一角。
The development of resistance is a natural biological process that will occur, sooner or later, with every drug. The use of any antimicrobial for any infection, in any dose, and over any time period, forces microbes to either adapt or die in a phenomenon known as “selective pressure”. The microbes which adapt and survive carry genes for resistance, which can be passed on from one person to another and rapidly spread around the world.
出现耐药是每种药物迟早都会发生的自然生物过程。针对某种感染使用某一剂量的某种抗菌剂一段时间，会迫使微生物或是适应，或是死亡；这种现象称为“选择压力”。适应并存活下来的微生物携带耐药基因，可以从一个人传给另一个人，并在世界上快速蔓延开来。
