The World Health Organization has said in a report that bacteria have been developing resistance against common antibiotic medicine in every region of the world. If urgent action is not taken, the time will not be far away when people will again begin to die from common illnesses, said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, WHO's assistant director-general for health security.

The report, released on Thursday by the WHO, was based on data collected from 114 countries and attracted focus on developing resistance of bacteria against antibiotics, especially by the ones that cause sepsis, diarrhoea, pneumonia, urinary tract infections and gonorrhoea.

Drug-resistant bacteria are so dangerous that one South Asian child dies every five minutes due to infection which cannot be treated. Similar infections claim lives of about 25,000 Europeans every year.

There is a dire need to address the issue as soon as possible, otherwise a post-antibiotic era will emerge in which common infections will again start killing people in high numbers. It is believed that overuse of antibiotics has helped bacteria develop resistance against them. Antibiotics are available over the counter without any prescription in India, Thailand, Vietnam and many other developing nations.

Carbapenem, an antibiotic used as a last resort for treating Klebsiella pneumonia, has been reported to be not effective any longer because of the resistance developed by the bacteria against it. What makes it worse is the fact that the resistance to carbapenem has been recorded throughout the world.

"Treatment failure of the last resort of treatment for gonorrhoea - third generation cephalosporins - has been confirmed in Austria, Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Norway, South Africa, Slovenia, Sweden and the UK", the report said.

Fukuda added that significant steps are needed to be taken to ensure people are safe at least from the common infections. Also, there is a need to change the approach for producing, prescribing and using antibiotics, added Fukuda. The issue must not be trivialized because it may lead the world to lose more and more of these global public health goods to devastate the humanity.