“Antimicrobial resistance is now one of the greatest public health threats facing the world. It threatens to unwind a century of medical progress, and send us back to the pre-antibiotic era, when routine infections could mean death”.
This was stated by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of WHO (World Health Organization), in announcing the “World Antimicrobial Awareness Week” (WAAW), the week of mobilization to combat antibiotic resistance that will be held from 18 to 24 November.
The theme of WAAW 2021 is “Spread Awareness, Stop Resistance”.
Dr. Ghebreyesus explained that WHO “is working with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the World Organisation for Animal Health, and the UN Environment Programme, with a ‘One Health’ approach to address the drivers of antimicrobial resistance in health systems, food systems and the interaction between humans, animals and our environment”.
Among the most encouraging and concrete proposals to counter and overcome antibiotic resistance, oxygen ozone therapy has emerged in recent years.
During a hearing held on 4 July 2019 before the Social Affairs Commission of the Italian Parliament, dedicated to possible solutions to combat “antimicrobial resistance”, prof. Marianno Franzini, international president of SIOOT (Scientific Society of Oxygen Ozone Therapy), had declared: “Antibiotic resistance is one of the greatest threats to global public health, but with oxygen/ozone therapy we can fight it and overcome it”.
Professor Franzini explained that ozone, with its high oxidative potential, is able to inactivate viruses and bacteria, resulting in the local destruction of the membranes of bacteria, which thus lose the ability to survive and / or reproduce. Ozone destroys pathogens so rapidly, they do not have time to develop and pass along resistance factors.
“Oxygen ozone – he added – is particularly useful in the prevention and treatment of infections in all areas (hospital, home, animal farms, etc.), as well as for the treatment of water (legionellosis) and air”.
In this regard, Prof. Franzini explained to the members of the Commission the methods of treatment successfully practiced on numerous patients suffering from antibiotic resistance: patients who had post-operative wounds that did not heal, resistant pneumonia, infections of different types that had lasted for months and that could not find a solution.
The effectiveness of oxygen ozone therapy in countering antibiotic resistance proved so evident that, in September 2020, a collaboration agreement was signed between SIOOT and the Università Cattolica Sacro Cuore to carry out a research project joint called “Multicenter clinical study on the evaluation of the efficacy of Oxygen-Ozone therapy in combination with antibiotic therapy”.
The university, known as UCSC or UNICATT or simply Cattolica, is an Italian private research university founded in 1921. Cattolica, with its five affiliated campuses, is the largest private university in Europe and the largest Catholic University in the world.
The scientific director of the project is Prof. Walter Ricciardi, from the Department of Life Sciences and Public Health. Prof. Ricciardi was Commissioner, and then President, of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) from 2015 to 2018.
The project signed by SIOOT and the Università Cattolica Sacro Cuore is original and unique: the first in the world that proposes to use oxygen/ozone therapy to overcome antibiotic resistance.
Already 15 hospitals have joined the trial. If the results that have been obtained so far on several patients are confirmed, the project will represent an excellence of Italian research with important implications for the whole world.
Interview by Antonio Gaspari
Director Orbisphera
www.orbisphera.org
For a more in-depth knowledge of the healing abilities of ozone, we recommend the book:
Antonio Gaspari, “Ozone: a cure for life”