But which antibiotics do we use?
In determining which antibiotics to add to the list, scientists went through a series of steps.
More than 40percentt of antibiotics prescribed in doctors' offices are for viral ailments, which antibiotics do not cure.
What works — like modifying the bacterial proteins to which antibiotics would otherwise bind — wins.
Concerned early last year about the growing resistance of bacteria to drugs, a C.D.C. panel of doctors recommended which antibiotics should be used to treat children's ear infections.
"We don't use antibiotics indiscriminately, and we closely monitor the common bugs, and which antibiotics would be best to treat it," says Kumar, from Kalawati Saran.
But other studies show that green is no more common in a bacterial infection than a viral one, for which antibiotics are ineffective.
But it emerged that the government does not know which antibiotics are being used in which animals and where the resistance problems in animals are.
An ear infection, for example, is the single biggest condition for which antibiotics are prescribed, but it is tricky to diagnose.
Shiv Kumari Yadav, 27, attended one of the clinics in Chhattisgarh, eastern India, at which antibiotics were handed out that authorites have said might have contained rat poison.
Dr. Butler, an expert on plague, had been conducting research on which antibiotics should be stockpiled in case of a plague outbreak.
