TUNE in to Radio 4’s gripping new medical thriller tomorrow afternoon and you may well be frightened out of your skin.

Resistance imagines what might happen if antibiotics stopped working. In the three-part drama a mystery illness erupts at a music festival in the North East. Antibiotics are powerless to stop the spread of the disease. Before long, Britain is in the grip of an uncontrollable epidemic...

The drama is chilling. But it’s just a story, isn’t it?

For now. The scenario it depicts, however, is growing ever more plausible.

Overuse of antibiotics has caused bacteria to evolve and become resistant. That, coupled with our failure to develop new ones, means we may soon find ourselves in a world where they no longer work.

The consequences could be catastrophic. Simple operations like hip replacements would become dangerous because of the risk of infection. Transplants would become almost impossible, for the same reason. Even childbirth would be more risky.

Already, more than 5,000 people die in the UK each year from antibiotic-resistant infections. In a genuine pandemic, UK fatalities could run into the hundreds of thousands, according to Professor Colin Garner, the York scientist heading up ANTRUK, a charity dedicated to tackling antibiotic resistance.

At least ANTRUK is doing something about it. It hopes to make antibiotics effective again by finding ways to use them in combination with other commonly drugs. Already it has identified ten antibiotic/ drug combinations that may be effective.

Further tests then clinical trials are needed.

But it is great to see a York-based charity taking the lead in tackling this real and growing threat.