“To highlight this trend, and coordinate a response for dealing with it, the World Health Organization just released a list of the twelve most crucial antibiotics for researchers to focus on. The list is divided into three categories and ranked in order of urgency. The WHO hopes that this list will help guide the response of the scientific community going forward.
The three types of bacteria in the ‘critical’ category, the most severe category in the WHO’s list, all have one thing in common: resistance to carbapenems, a group of ‘last resort’ antibiotics usually used when an infection has proven resistant to all other forms of antibiotics. Some bacteria have recently developed a resistance even to carbapenems, and there is little else doctors can do once someone is exposed to them.”
