Fighting Superbugs With Shots: Vaccines Against Antimicrobial-Resistant Microbes

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Drug-resistant superbugs are killers. They directly kill more than a million people a year, the World Health Organization says, and contribute to five million deaths a year.

But vaccinated people are much less likely to get infected in the first place, so why not make better use of vaccines to fight these superbugs? In this episode, Dr. David Heymann, a veteran of the war against infectious diseases, tells us how vaccines might be put to better use to prevent antimicrobial-resistant organisms.

Dr. David Heymann spent more than 25 years at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with more than 20 of those years on secondment to the World Health Organization. He is also a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.