An introduction to antibiotic resistant infections

This new short course aims to increase your general understanding of antibiotic resistance and help you understand how it affects different people, including you.

Antibiotic resistance is nothing new, but it has increased to such an extent that it is now undermining modern medicine. The reality is, people around the world are developing bacterial infections which no longer respond to existing antibiotics, and in the worst of cases, can be fatal.

This short course will give you a basic understanding of this topic. It will identify some simple behaviours you can include in your everyday life, to help contain antibiotic resistance in your local community.

You are not expected to have any scientific or health-related background. There is a lot of excellent information available on the internet for people who already know about this topic. We aim to provide an introduction to help overcome misunderstandings and to help people appreciate that antibiotic resistance does impact on everybody, regardless of whether they are ill now or in the future. It also highlights how you can do simple things to contain antibiotic resistance and reduce the risk to human health. Our work is grounded in the need to ensure that antibiotics will work when people need them. Antibiotic resistance is not just a problem for people but is a problem for animals, agriculture and the environment as a whole. This short course is focused on antibiotic resistance and you.