The international community sits at the tipping pointof a post-­‐antibiotic era, where common bacterial infections are no longer treatable with the antibiotic armamentarium that exists. In South Africa, the identification of the first case of pan-­‐resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae(Brink et al, J Clin Microbiol. 2013;51(1):369-­‐72) marks a watershed moment and highlights ourtip of the antibiotic resistance ‘iceberg’ in this country. Multi-­‐drug resistant (MDR)-­‐bacterial infections, predominantly in Gram-­‐negative bacteria such as Klebsiella pneumoniae, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosaand Acinetobacter baumanniiare now commonplace in South African hospitals. Whilst a number of expensive new antibiotics for Gram-­‐positive bacterial infections have been manufactured recently (some of which are licenced for usein South Africa), no new antibiotics active against Gram-­‐negative infections are expected in the next 10-­‐15years. Hence what we have now, needs conserving