The following text is written for pupils with low reading ages to help them study the topic of antibiotics and bacteria resistance.

Before antibiotics

Think back to the last time you cut yourself. Can you imagine that cut becoming infected with bacteria – so seriously infected that you would die?

Before the discovery of antibiotics, there was nothing anybody could do. Bacteria could kill 80 percent of people with infected wounds.

Who would have thought a mouldy plate would lead to this?

In 1928, Alexander Fleming, a doctor at London’s St. Mary’s Hospital, found that a mould on a discarded plate had antibacterial properties. This mould was ‘penicillin’. Penicillin is an antibiotic.

Antibiotics kill bacteria and slow down their growth. A bacterium consists of one single cell and antibiotics disturb their cell functions. Antibiotics do not work against viruses because a virus consists of a DNA fragment instead of a cell.

Human life expectancy increased rapidly by eight years when antibiotics were first introduced in the 1930s.

Bacteria resistance

Within four years of penicillin being introduced onto the market, bacteria resistance was being reported. Bacteria resistance means that an antibiotic no longer kills the bacteria.

Today bacteria resistance against commonly used antibiotics is increasing rapidly around the world and a growing problem.