When the medicine stops working

A devastating car crash nearly killed Vanessa Carter two decades ago, shattering her bones and severely injuring her face. What followed was an even greater battle, one that couldn’t be seen.

Vanessa, a mother of two now living in the UK, underwent multiple surgeries to rebuild her face and fight a stubborn infection that no antibiotic seemed able to stop. “Every single day waking up to a recurring infection was frightening,” she says. “I kept looking in the mirror and seeing this infection eating away at my face and wondering, am I going to have a face in the morning? How much further damage is it going to do?”

She often thinks of the 2004 collision in Johannesburg, South Africa, when another driver veered into her lane. She lost her right eye and went through dozens of surgeries to rebuild her face and remove the infection. Each time, it returned. “They were prescribing the same type of antibiotic over and over, and it wasn’t working,” Vanessa recalls.

An invisible enemy

The bacteria inside her wounds had changed. They had learnt to survive. The infection – called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection – no longer responded to medicines that once worked. “A surgeon told me if the infection hit my bloodstream, I could die. There were nights I lay awake wondering if it would kill me. I just wanted to know why it kept coming back.”

The answer, she later learnt, was antimicrobial resistance, or AMR. It happens when microbes, like bacteria, adapt so that treatments stop being effective. It is a growing global threat that puts millions of lives at risk. A study in ‘The Lancet’ estimates that more than 39 million people could die from drug-resistant infections between 2025 and 2050.1

For Vanessa, recovery came through persistence. She sought help from a transplant surgeon in Boston who created a plan to remove the infection and complete her reconstruction in as few surgeries as possible. Working with South African doctors who carried out the procedures, she underwent two operations and a final course of last-resort antibiotics. Her long fight to rebuild her face finally ended.

“We often think antibiotics can cure anything, but AMR can happen to anybody. You get so used to antibiotics working and then one day they just don’t,” she says. “I told myself if I get out of this alive, I am going to make a difference for others.”

From survivor to advocate

Driven by her experience, Vanessa speaks publicly on the need for responsible antibiotic use and the importance of early, accurate diagnosis to stop infection. She collaborates with health organisations and researchers to help others understand the patient impact of AMR. Her story is a powerful reminder that behind every statistic there are people fighting to live and that awareness can save lives.

Through her non-profit organisation, The AMR Narrative, Vanessa educates the public and healthcare workers on reducing AMR, emphasising foundational steps like hand hygiene and correct antibiotic use.

At the same time, researchers at Roche are aiming to develop a new class of antibiotics as part of a global effort to fight antimicrobial resistance and hopefully protect future generations.

“Antibiotics are a precious resource,” Vanessa says. “They save so many lives, and we need to protect them and keep finding new ones.”