The serious harm antibiotics can cause

Many Chinese school students get low doses of antibiotics through their food and the environment. Recent news reports say 18 antibiotics were found in the urine samples of 58.3 percent of the 1,064 schoolchildren covered by a study in Shanghai, and Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. The results of the study on the children aged 8-11 years should prompt the health and environmental authorities to swing into action against the growing threat of antibiotics.

The presence of antibiotics in the students' urine can be attributed to the misuse and/or overuse of antibiotics in animal feed. And the growing use of antibiotics in animal feed is giving rise to superbugs, or microorganisms - mostly bacteria - that carry several antibiotic-resistance genes.

The seriousness of the problem is underscored by the World Health Organization, which in a recent report called this phenomenon a "global threat". The WHO report follows a 2013 US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report, which showed that every year 2 million people in the US are infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and 23,000 die from them. Last year, Dr Sally Davies, chief medical officer for England, called the problem a "ticking time bomb" and said that it probably will become as threatening in magnitude as climate change.