Causes of antimicrobial resistance
The main contributors to accelerating antimicrobial resistance are misuse and overuse of antimicrobials.
Antimicrobials kill the sensitive organisms allowing the resistant ones to proliferate and become dominant.
Bacteria also have the ability to transfer a range of drug-resistant genes to other bacteria – through the transfer of mobile genetic elements (MGEs).
The other major factor in the growth of antibiotic resistance is spread of the resistant strains of bacteria from person to person, or from the non-human sources in the environment.