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This natural process has been vastly accelerated and amplified by a number of human practices, behaviours, and policy failures. Collectively, the world has failed to handle these fragile cures with appropriate care. We have assumed that miracle cures will last forever, with older drugs eventually failing only to be replaced by newer, better and more powerful ones. This is not at all the trend we are seeing.
人类的一些做法、行为和政策失误，大大加速并放大了这一自然过程。全世界都未能以恰当的谨慎来对待这些易受影响的药物。我们想当然地以为神药永远存在，旧药最终失效，而更新、更好、作用更强的药物会取代它们。但我们现在看到的趋势却并非如此。
Faulty practices and flawed assumptions have clearly made the inevitable development of drug resistance happen much sooner, rather than later. For some diseases, like malaria, our options are very limited as we have only a single class of effective drugs - artemisinin-based combination therapies - with which to treat more than 200 million falciparum cases each year. Although new drugs are under development, especially through the Medicines for Malaria Venture, a public-private partnership, early signals of artemisinin resistance have already been detected.
耐药性迟早都会出现，而错误的做法和站不住脚的假设明显地让它提前发生，而非延后。对疟疾等疾病，我们的选择余地十分有限，因为只有青篙素类复合制剂这一类有效药物，每年用来治疗2亿多恶性疟病例。尽管通过“疟疾药物开发项目”这一公私合作机制以及其他机制正在开发新药，但人们已经发现了青篙素耐药的早期征兆。
Similarly, gains in reducing child deaths due to diarrhoea and respiratory infections are at risk. And, while TB deaths are declining, in just the past year nearly half a million people developed multidrug-resistant TB, and a third of them died as a result. These are just a few of the stark warnings that must be heeded.
我们在减少腹泻及呼吸道感染造成的死亡儿童人数方面所取得的成就也同样面临危险。还有，结核造成的死亡人数不断下降，但仅去年就有近50万人出现了耐多药结核，并造成其中1/3的人死亡。这些只是我们必须注意的严峻警告中的一部分。
The responsibility for turning this situation around is entirely in our hands. Irrational and inappropriate use of antimicrobials is by far the biggest driver of drug resistance. This includes overuse, when drugs are dispensed too liberally, sometimes to “be on the safe side”, sometimes in response to patient demand, but often for doctors and pharmacists to make more money.
我们对转变目前的局势负有全责。抗菌剂的不合理及不当使用，目前是出现耐药的最主要原因。它包括发药过于随便导致的过度用药；有时是“为保险起见”，有时是因为患者要求，但经常是因为医生和药师想挣更多的钱。
This includes underuse, especially when economic hardship encourages patients to stop treatment as soon as they feel better, rather than complete the treatment course needed to fully kill the pathogen. This includes misuse, when drugs are given for the wrong disease, usually in the absence of a diagnostic test.
它还包括用药不足，尤其是患者因经济困难而感觉稍好就停止用药，而不是坚持完成杀死所有病原体所需的整个疗程。还包括用药与疾病不符（通常是在缺乏实验室诊断的情况下）导致的药物误用。
In many countries, this includes a failure to keep substandard products off the market, to ensure that antimicrobials are dispensed only by a licensed prescriber, and to stop over-the-counter sales of individual pills.
在许多国家，它还包括未能杜绝劣质药品进入市场，未能确保抗菌剂只能由合法注册的处方人员开出，未能阻止零散药片作为非处方药出售。
