雅思阅读 43: The Silent Spread of Superbugs（沉默蔓延的超级细菌）

改编自 World Health Organization / CBS News（2025年10月）。雅思阅读 Section 3 难度，约 1050 词。 素材来源：https://www.cbsnews.com/news/superbugs-drug-resistant-spread-surging-who/

Reading Passage

A. For most of the twentieth century, antibiotics were regarded as one of medicine's greatest triumphs. A scratch infected by a dirty knife, a bout of pneumonia, a urinary infection that refused to clear — all could be subdued by a course of pills prescribed by a family doctor. Surgeons stopped fearing that a routine operation would end in sepsis; oncologists could suppress the immune system to treat cancer, confident that infections would be held in check; women giving birth in hospital no longer faced the constant threat of puerperal fever. That confidence is now crumbling. In October 2025, the World Health Organization released its most comprehensive surveillance report on antimicrobial resistance, drawing on data submitted by more than a hundred countries to its Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System, or GLASS. The headline figure was stark: across laboratory-confirmed bacterial infections worldwide in 2023, roughly one in six was resistant to the antibiotic that a clinician would normally reach for first. The agency's director-general warned that resistance was "outpacing advances in modern medicine" and eroding the foundation on which routine surgery, chemotherapy and childbirth all depend.

B. The mechanism behind the crisis is evolution, but its tempo has been set by human behaviour. When bacteria are exposed to an antibiotic, susceptible cells die while any mutant cells carrying a resistance gene survive and multiply. Those genes can then be shared between species through small loops of DNA called plasmids, meaning a resistance mechanism that emerges in a harmless gut bacterium can, within months, appear in a dangerous pathogen. Every prescription that is unnecessarily prolonged, every dose sold over the counter without a diagnosis, every kilogram of antibiotic fed to intensively farmed livestock applies selective pressure that accelerates this process. The WHO report examined resistance rates for twenty-two antibiotics used against urinary and gastrointestinal infections, bloodstream infections and gonorrhoea, tracking eight common pathogens including Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae. Over the five years to 2023, resistance rose in more than forty per cent of the monitored pathogen-drug combinations, climbing on average by somewhere between five and fifteen per cent each year. By 2023, over forty per cent of E. coli infections and fifty-five per cent of K. pneumoniae infections were no longer susceptible to third-generation cephalosporins — the class of drugs clinicians choose first when these bacteria enter the bloodstream.

C. The human cost is already measurable. Antimicrobial-resistant infections directly cause more than a million deaths annually and contribute to nearly five million, according to WHO estimates — figures comparable in scale to malaria or tuberculosis. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the previous month that hospital infection rates from so-called "nightmare bacteria", a category of drug-resistant pathogens with limited treatment options, had jumped by almost seventy per cent between 2019 and 2023. Urinary tract infections, once treated reliably with a single antibiotic, now show resistance above thirty per cent to commonly prescribed agents in many regions. The danger is not confined to hospitals. A resistance gene that emerges on a poultry farm in one country can, within years, appear on a hospital ward on another continent, carried by travellers, contaminated food or the international trade in agricultural products. The WHO's antimicrobial-resistance surveillance unit has repeatedly noted that resistance rates are highest where health systems are weakest — one in three reported infections in South-East Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean region, and one in five in Africa. These regions also tend to rely on a handful of cheap, older antibiotics that have been used for decades, further accelerating the selection of resistant strains.

D. Yet even this picture is incomplete, because nearly half of countries still submit no resistance data at all. Silvia Bertagnolio, who leads the WHO's surveillance unit, acknowledged that the agency is "flying blind" in large parts of the world. Where surveillance is weak, clinicians may not be able to identify the pathogen in front of them and may reach automatically for the broadest-spectrum antibiotic available, further fuelling resistance. Conversely, the regions that report the highest rates may be over-represented because they test only their sickest patients — the ones most likely to carry resistant bugs — while treating milder cases empirically. Whatever the statistical caveats, the direction of travel is unambiguous: resistance is climbing fastest in precisely the places where diagnostic laboratories, infection-control staff and affordable second-line drugs are in shortest supply. The gap between surveillance capacity and the scale of the problem is itself a public-health emergency, because resources cannot be targeted where they are most needed if the places most at risk are invisible.

E. The most worrying trend is the thinning pipeline. Yvan Hutin, who heads the WHO's antimicrobial-resistance department, described the combination of rising antibiotic use, rising resistance and a shrinking supply of new drugs as "a very dangerous combination". Few novel classes of antibiotic have reached the market since the 1980s, because the economics of drug development discourage investment in medicines that are deliberately rationed to preserve their effectiveness. A company that spends a billion dollars bringing a new antibiotic to market makes very little revenue if doctors are instructed to use it only as a last resort. The result is that clinicians are increasingly forced to choose between older, more toxic agents with serious side effects, and no treatment at all. The WHO has repeatedly warned that there are not enough new diagnostic tests in the pipeline either, meaning resistant infections are often detected too late. Early diagnosis, the report notes, is as important as treatment: a resistant bug identified on day one can be contained, while the same bug spread undetected through a ward can cause an outbreak that takes weeks to bring under control. Unless surveillance is extended, prescriptions are rationalised, agricultural use is curbed and incentives are realigned to reward innovation, the report concludes, routine medical procedures that became normal in the postwar decades may become, once again, life-threatening gambles.

Questions 1-4

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B, C, D and E from the list of headings below.

List of Headings i. Why resistance has spread so rapidly ii. The history of penicillin discovery iii. The already measurable human toll iv. The blind spots in global surveillance v. Why the future looks even worse vi. How antibiotics are manufactured in factories vii. The cost of hospital parking

1. Paragraph B: ____
2. Paragraph C: ____
3. Paragraph D: ____
4. Paragraph E: ____

Questions 5-8

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

5. According to the WHO report, what share of laboratory-confirmed bacterial infections in 2023 were resistant to first-line antibiotics? A. About one in three. B. Roughly one in six. C. Almost half. D. Less than ten per cent.

6. Over the five years to 2023, resistance rose in what proportion of monitored pathogen-drug combinations? A. About ten per cent. B. Roughly twenty-five per cent. C. Over forty per cent. D. Nearly all combinations.

7. Why are resistance rates thought to be highest in regions with weaker health systems? A. Those regions have no bacteria at all. B. Clinicians there may lack diagnostics and rely on broad-spectrum drugs. C. Their hospitals are newer and cleaner. D. People there take fewer antibiotics.

8. Why is the drug pipeline described as a concern? A. Too many new antibiotics are being produced. B. Few new antibiotic classes have been introduced since the 1980s. C. Patients refuse to take new drugs. D. Old antibiotics are becoming more effective.

Questions 9-13

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer?

Write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

9. The WHO 2025 report drew on data from more than a hundred countries.
10. Resistant E. coli infections have already been completely eradicated in the United States.
11. In South-East Asia, one in three reported infections was resistant.
12. Around half of countries still submit no resistance data.
13. Most new antibiotics developed since 2010 have been produced in China.

Questions 14-15

Complete the summary below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage.

Resistance to third-generation (14) __________ now affects over 40% of E. coli and 55% of K. pneumoniae infections, yet nearly half of countries submit no (15) __________ data at all.

答案与解析

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