Thousands of people could die in the event of a U.K. outbreak of drug-resistant blood infections, a looming crisis that health officials have compared to a "time bomb."
According to a report released by the Cabinet Office in late March, some 200,000 people could become infected if such an outbreak were to occur, the BBC reported.
One in three of those people - or 80,000 - could die, reads the report from the National Risk Register of Civil Emergencies.
The fatalities would stem from the inability to treat such blood infections with antibiotics, making procedures like organ transplants and cancer treatments dangerous. Treatments for the flu, tuberculosis and other diseases that at one time caused mass fatalities would be compromised.
"Without effective antibiotics, even minor surgery and routine operations could become high-risk procedures, leading to increased duration of illness and ultimately premature mortality," the report says according to the BBC.
In other words, the use of most modern medicine would be unsafe. Experts warn drug-resistant infections could dramatically increase over the next two decades.
U.K. officials have previously urged for swift change in a country where some doctors are too apt to prescribe antibiotics.
"The more we use antibiotics, the less effective they become as diseases evolve and become resistant to existing antimicrobial medicines," Alastair Hay, a professor of Primary Care, said in a National Institute for Health and Care Excellence report offering guidelines for battling infections.
Dame Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer of England, said the issue is a "ticking time bomb."
"If we don't take action, in 20 years' time we could be back in the 19th century where infections kill us as a result of routine operations," she said in 2013, according to The Guardian.
The report says the U.K. is already working with partners around the world to find a solution to the problem.
