Can a virus be the answer to the battle against superbugs

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global crisis that threatens a century of progress in medicine, with alarming levels of resistance being reported by countries of all income levels. The spread of AMR organisms results in common diseases becoming untreatable, and lifesaving medical procedures riskier to perform. Healthcare-acquired infections (HAIs) carry the highest-burden compared to all other infectious diseases including HIV, tuberculosis, and influenza. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that more than 2.8 million antibiotic- resistant infections occur in the U.S. each year, and more than 35,000 people die as a result of it. Although bacteriophage (‘phage’) therapy was discovered about a century ago, the advancement of antibiotics left this forgotten cure to be well-studied only behind the “iron curtains” of the former Soviet Union.