Battling superbugs

The University has become an Antibiotic Guardian this week. Find out more about how research at Leeds is helping to tackle antibiotic overuse and how you too can help.

Bacteria

This week is World Antibiotic Awareness Week and to mark it the University has become an Antibiotic Guardian.  This means that we have made a pledge aimed at helping the world make better use of antibiotics to save them from becoming increasingly ineffective.

Listen to TV’s Dr Chris van Tulleken explain what problems antibiotic resistance can cause and what it means to be an Antibiotic Guardian.

Courtesy of Public Health England and Antibiotic Guardian

Our pledge is to promote European Antibiotic Awareness Day ( 18 November) and World Antibiotic Awareness Week (14-20 November) in our local area and across the University.

You can read more about how we are doing this on the University’s main website, where we outline the research going on at Leeds to help tackle antibiotic overuse and resistance.  This includes the £3.8 million project to develop a rapid diagnostic test that doctors can use to identify different types of infection and so decide on the best way to treat it: which may not be with antibiotics.

It is not just institutions that can become Antibiotic Guardians.  You too can make a pledge to do something that will help tackle antibiotic misuse.  Take inspiration from Dr Angela Oates in the School of Healthcare, who has pledged to get her students to take the Antibiotic Guardian online quiz.

What will your pledge be?

Banner image shows Dr Rebecca Thompson from the Faculty of Biological Sciences operating the University's cryo electron microscopes. 

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