ABSTRACT
Throughout history, infectious diseases have been a major threat to human and animal health and a signifi cant cause of mortality. Thus, it is not surprising that the discovery of antimicrobial drugs to treat bacterial infections has been termed as one of the greatest innovations in medicine. However, bacterial resistance to antimicrobial drugs has emerged rapidly and antimicrobial resistance has become a major public health problem globally (WHO 2011). In 2007, altogether 400,000 people in Europe suffered from infections caused by multidrug-resistant bacteria. More than 25,000 people died from these infections. The additional expenditure in terms of hospital costs and productivity losses exceeds €1.5 billion each year in Europe (ECDC and EMEA 2009). In the United States, antimicrobial-resistant infections cause $20 billion excess health care costs, $35 billion societal costs, and 8 million additional hospital days (Roberts et al. 2009).
