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That basically shows that, although there was a fair bit of C. dif-ficile in the hospital, the steps the hospital was taking during the spike - such as hand hygiene and cleaning protocols, etc. - were actually preventing the spread from patient to patient, said Garber.

"Probably what's happening is that people come into the hospital sick get antibiotics - which is an inevitability; we're never going to eliminate antibiotics, that's for sure - but, in some cases, patients might be at risk but we wouldn't know it until they've actually received the antibiotics."

Some reports suggest the bacteria are becoming resistant to even these strongest drugs.

there aren’t any new antibiotics in the pipeline.

“I don’t think we are going to be seeing anything new to treat these infections within five to 10 years,” Mulvey said.

More than 2,890 hospital patients in Canada are infected with superbugs at any one time, according to new research published in the journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.

earlier this month, the World Economic Forum included antibiotic drug resistance in its Global Risks 2013 report, calling it “arguably the greatest risk of hubris to human health.”

The existing market model simply doesn’t work, McGeer said. Pharmaceutical companies profit more from drugs used to treat chronic diseases, not antibiotics that patients use for just a few days, she said.

prevention will have to be a cornerstone. “The most effective way of not using antibiotics is to not have the infection in the first place,” McGeer said.

es," said Dr. Liz Tayler, senior technical adviser on antimicrobial resistance with WHO. There are many reasons why antibiotic resistance has struggled to gain traction as global priority, however. For one, it's a complex issue that can prove difficult to explain - a headache-inducing combination of molecular chemistry, evolutionary concepts, and bacteria with unpronounceable names. WHO has compared the problem to a "silent tsunami." Unlike

a high-profile killer like cancer, deaths caused by antibiotic resistance tend to be less obvious or visible. "It never goes on anyone's death certificate ... when someone has died of a nasty infection, the fact that it's resistant either wasn't known or hasn't been talked about," Tayler said. "And while it's a really big problem in developing countries, the labs there aren't very good and they don't have the resources to do the testing to find out (why someone died)." Antibiotic resistance is also considered a "tragedy of the commons," where the effectiveness of antibiotics has been depleted by people who prioritize their own interests over the public good. And everyone is culpable: patients who demand antibiotics unnecessarily and doctors who cave to their demands; farmers who feed their livestock antibiotics and consumers who demand cheap

meat; low-income countries that allow antibiotics to be widely sold without prescription, and wealthy nations that need to do more to help those countries improve the sanitary conditions that lead to high infection rates. All of this human activity is pouring unprecedented volumes of antibiotics into the environment - and placing evolutionary pressure on microbes to evolve new strategies for defeating them. "I think of this problem as a planetary change at a microscopic level - one that we don't even notice. We're changing microbial ecology in a very significant way," Laxminarayan said. "We need to protect antibiotics with the same seriousness as we protected the ozone layer through the Montreal protocol." Wednesday's UN meeting will likely see countries agreeing to a declaration on combating antimicrobial resistance. This step - while largely symbolic - will draw global attention to the issue, sketch out solutions, and place pressure on countries to address the problem within their own boundaries.

"It requires all of these folks to be paying attention that they are now on notice," Laxminarayan said. But the declaration won't be binding, nor will it contain specific targets. For Dr. Brad Spellberg, an antibiotic resistance expert with the University of Southern California, the UN meeting is just one step and "there's still a lot of heavy lifting that has to be done." Tackling antibiotic resistance will require work on multiple fronts, he said - everything from improving prevention efforts to reducing antibiotic use in livestock and fish farms. The world also needs to recognize that antibiotic resistance is a threat we will have to face for not just years, but centuries or millennia, he added.

“Dutch healthcare uses the fewest antibiotics in the world,” is the bold and justifiable claim of the Dutch Health Council, the government’s independent scientific advisers. The country has had low use for decades.1 Yet in veterinary medicine the Netherlands, the world’s second largest exporter of agri-food products (after the United States), was, until a few years ago, among the highest users. This mismatch sparked action that saw the country cut antibiotic use in farm animals by nearly 60% from 2007 to 2015.2 3

New findings published Tuesday shed more light on the rising problem of "superbugs," or antibiotic-resistant microbes, showing that at least 30 percent of antibiotics prescribed in the United States are unnecessary. Modern Healthcare describes the analysis as "the first detailed look at all antibiotic prescribing throughout the country."

In Canada, it’s estimated between 56,000 and 63,000 people die as a result of medical errors and hospital-acquired infections – the second leading cause of death.

preventable medical errors are going to get worse if the Ontario government cuts hospital budgets and thousands more beds

To find out more about the June 4 conference go to: http://www.ochu.on.ca/conferences_conventions.html