in a national reference laboratory at Britain's Health Protection Agency. "All you can seek to do is to stay a jump ahead." That's not happening now for a number of reasons. For a start, antibiotics are everywhere, giving bacteria countless opportunities to evolve escape routes. The drugs can be picked up, without prescription, for pennies in countries like Thailand, India and parts of Latin America. Even though their use is controlled in the west, the system encourages doctors to shoot the bugs first and ask questions later. Perhaps most worryingly, the world's top drug companies, faced with decreasing returns and ever more expensive and difficult science, have not only slowed their efforts to develop new antibiotics but have been quitting the field in droves. Today, only two large companies - GlaxoSmithKline Plc and AstraZeneca Plc -- still have strong and active antibiotic research and development programmes, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Back in 1990, there were nearly 20. That could have a profound impact on how we treat our sick. "If some of the most potent multi- resistant strains that we see now accumulate, then modern medicine -- from transplants to cancer treatment and even quite straightforward gut surgery, potentially becomes untenable," says Livermore. "You need the ability to treat infections in vulnerable patients. Lose that and a swathe of modern medicine becomes unstable." Are we about to start going backwards, to a pre-antibiotic era in which things like hip replacements, chemotherapy and intensive care are simply impossible? It's a big enough fear for the World Health Organisation to devote this year's World Health Day on April 7 to antimicrobial resistance in a bid to safeguard these drugs for future generations. "Modern medicine can't function without effective antibiotics," says Derek Butler, chairman of the MRSA Action UK charity for which the Owens are raising money. "If we lose these magic bullets, medicine will be set back over 80 years. RAT ON THE WARD One aspect of the race against bugs has changed little since Fleming's time, or Florence Nightingale's before that. Hospital hygiene is the basic, unglamorous and underpaid work that forms the vital first-line of defence against pathogens. If it is done properly, it can ease the demand for drugs in the first place. Yet Steve Owen remembers his dad telling him he'd seen a rat running through his ward - a shock in a developed world hospital. Bugs are no respecters of age. Donald Owen was 82 when the treatment for his knee problems ended up killing him. Susan Fallon's daughter Sammie was just 17 when she was admitted with flu-like symptoms to another British hospital in April 2008. Pretty, petite -- at only five feet tall she was "like a little doll", her mother says -- Sammie dreamed of being a professional photographer. When her hospital blood tests came back with worrying results, doctors ordered more, including a bone marrow biopsy. That led to a diagnosis of a rare blood disorder which required chemotherapy. She also picked up a superbug. Just over a month later, before any treatment had a chance to work, Sammie was dead. The experience left her mother bereft, angry and with a fear of hospitals and the people who work in them. "I don't know which one came in without washing their hands and gave this bug to Sammie," she says. "But if I went into hospital now I'd be saying 'Wash your hands before you come near me' -- I'd be really vigilant."