With a UK report this month estimating by 2050 10 million people a year will die of infections, the hunt is on for new antimicrobial drugs - among those on the trail in New Zealand are Dr Siouxsie Wiles and her team at Auckland University's Bioluminescent Superbugs Lab.
"Antibiotic-resistant microbes have incredible power," Siouxsie says. "The fact the human race is running out of effective antibiotics is a huge crisis - and it's come about because we've kind of wasted the ones we've had.
"Within the next 10 years we'll have run out of antibiotics but we started saying that 2 years ago so it's looming ever larger. Quite common infections will be difficult to treat and routine surgery, such as knee or hip replacements, will become risky."
Siouxsie's team is working with Landcare Research to look for new antibiotics among 10,000 fungi gathered in New Zealand and the South Pacific. "Penicillin was made from fungi, so we're hoping there may be something like that waiting to be discovered."
But there's no knowing where research will lead, she says, using as an example the scientist delving into hirsutism (too much body hair) who discovered that minute doses of the deadly toxin Clostridium botulinum acted as a muscle relaxant. The result? Botox.
Clostridium botulinum - which has a toxic strain and an almost-identical non-toxic strain - was the bacteria at the centre of the 2013 Fonterra milk powder scare.
"As a microbiologist I wanted to help people understand the Fonterra story," says Siouxsie, an award-winning science communicator. "So I wrote blogs and talked to media - I was never criticised to my face by other scientists but there was plenty of behind-the-scenes noise that I was stepping out of line.
"Unfortunately, the scientists who did understand what was going on were bound by confidentiality agreements and couldn't speak. It was a good example of the role scientists have in interpreting technical information and keeping the public informed."
Siouxsie was raised in South Africa before the family returned to Britain when she was 15.
"I didn't come at science from a point of discovery and it was allowed to blossom," she says. "I was told by my school in South Africa that these are the things you have aptitude in so that's what you're doing.
"When I started school in Britain it was mind blowing that I had a choice of subjects."
Biology, unlike physics and maths, has never suffered from a lack of female students but Siouxsie notes not enough women stay in the field long term. "Nicola Gaston, president of the NZ Association of Scientists, wrote a short book called Why Science is Sexist that shows unconscious bias - from men and women - against female scientists at every step.
"There's been a push for a long time to get more women into STEM subjects [science, technology, engineering and maths] but the biology results show that shoving more girls into the pipeline at the bottom doesn't work. The whole process needs to change, but if we're aware of an unconscious bias then we can consciously work to correct it."
the details:
Siouxsie Wiles appears at Escape! in Marvellous Microbes (5.30pm, June 3), Let There Be Light (2.30pm, June 5) and The Great Escape! (4pm, June 5). Tickets from Baycourt or www.ticketek.co.nz. See the full Escape! programme at taurangafestival.co.nz.