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The use of antibiotics has made more and more bacteria resistant to the medicine. Dr Michael Mosley goes in search of the cause and new solutions to overcome the superbugs.

More and more bacteria are becoming insensitive to antibiotics, not least due to excessive drug consumption. According to the EU, this problem could soon become as explosive as the environmental issue - and antibiotic resistance threatens to become one of the main causes of death worldwide. Research must therefore find alternatives - not miracle cures, but permanently effective drugs. There has already been one in the past: One hundred years ago, the French biologist Félix d'Hérelle discovered mysterious "bacteria-eating" viruses, known as bacteriophages or phages for short. He used these to successfully treat bacterial infections before the development of antibiotics, but his method was forgotten again. Is bacteriophage therapy the miracle medicine of the future?

Are the medicines and every day products we use putting us at risk RESISTANCE sheds light on the global crisis of antibiotic resistance and uncovers how our extensive use of bacteria-killing antibiotics has created a new kind of disease, resistant to the medicines created to destroy it.

The UN General Assembly regards antibiotic-resistance as a "global and most urgent threat". The WHO alarms that we could fall back into a "post-antibiotic age". The film tells us how we got there: It is a story about how negligence, greed, and short-sightedness have rendered the lifesaving effects of antibiotics powerless. It is a science-thriller about disillusioned, fighting doctors, rebellious scientists, patients wrestling with life-threatening diseases and diplomats searching for a global solution. They all are Resistance Fighters.

FRONTLINE investigates the widespread use of antibiotics in food animals and whether it is fueling the growing crisis of antibiotic resistance in people. Also this hour: An exclusive interview with the family of a young man who died in a nightmare bacteria outbreak that swept through a hospital at the National Institutes of Health.

The film explores the link between our treatment of animals and emerging health threats such as pandemics and antibiotic resistance. It specifically looks at zoonotic diseases—germs and viruses that spread between human and non-human animals—which threaten the health and lives of the entire human population.

Dr. David Suzuki explains how antibiotics have been over prescribed for decades and it has led to the fact that now there are bacterial infections that are resistant to them, and people are dying by the thousands.