Bacteria are very small unicellular organisms (you cannot see them with the naked eye) that can cause disease in all living creatures – but that are also essential for life.

They are in the soil, in the air, in people, in plants. They can reproduce outside of living cells.

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Desirable bacteria include the flora in your digestive tract, and those bacteria used to make cheese and yoghurt and beer.

Dangerous bacteria can enter your body through a cut (you can get tetanus from this), through inhalation (such as when you get bacterial pneumonia), or when you eat or drinking something which contains the bacteria (drinking infected water can give you cholera, for instance). Their effect is to cause diseases and infections, to destroy tissue in the body, and/or produce toxins which have similar effects.

We use antibiotics to kill bacterial infections. They’re effective unless they’re abused, in which case bacteria can mutate to become drug-resistant. A good example of this is the drug-resistant tuberculosis now found in South Africa.

(Susan Erasmus, Health24, April 2007)
 

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