Award-winning Singaporean cartoonist Sonny Liew has dealt with Singapore’s political history, dementia and depression in his works. Now, he turns his hand to an unexpected new subject: antibiotics.
His next comic, The Antibiotic Tales, is a collaboration with infectious diseases expert Hsu Li Yang to explain antimicrobial to the lay reader.
In the comic, a Singaporean family goes to see the doctor. This is interspersed with scenes from a comic they are reading, which depicts a post-apocalyptic world where antibiotics have ceased to be effective, people can die from the slightest infection and food is in short supply because of the use of antibiotics in farming.
Dr Hsu, who is 47 this year, says that while antimicrobial resistance is a major global public health threat, it is not well understood by the public.
For example, the practice of giving healthy animals low doses of antibiotics to fatten them up exacerbates the problem, as does the leaching of antibiotics into water bodies and soil.
Dr Hsu hopes the use of comics will make these issues “more accessible to many others outside the healthcare profession, and explained in a relatable manner”.
According to a report commissioned by the British government, drug-resistant infections kill around 700,000 people worldwide each year. By 2050, 10 million people could die each year if existing antibiotics continue to lose their effectiveness.
Read more here.
Source: The Straits Times, 18 June 2019