Antibiotic-resistant NDM-1 Is Undermining India's Medical Sector

[polly7]

Last edited Sun Apr 1, 2012, 05:44 AM - Edit history (1)

Antibiotic-resistant NDM-1 Is Undermining India's Medical Sector
By Sonia Shah

Source: Foreign AffairsSaturday, March 31, 2012

http://www.zcommunications.org/antibiotic-resistant-ndm-1-is-undermining-indias-medical-sector-by-sonia-shah

"Some of modern medicine's most heralded interventions -- from routine surgeries to organ transplants and cancer treatments -- may soon be too dangerous. The viability of these procedures hinges on physicians' ability to use antibiotics to swiftly vanquish any bacterial infections that might arise in the course of treatment. For decades, physicians have been able to choose from hundreds of different kinds of antibiotics to do the job, including many powerful "broad spectrum" varieties that indiscriminately kill a wide range of bacteria. But over the past two decades, antibiotic drugs have started to fail one by one, as bacteria with resistance to them have emerged and spread. Taming the new drug-resistant pathogens requires ever more toxic, expensive, and time-consuming therapies, such as a class of last-resort antibiotics called carbapenems, which must be administered intravenously in hospitals. In the United States alone, fighting drug-resistant infections costs up to 8 million additional patient hospital days and up to $34 billion every year (http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/52/suppl_5/S397.full).

Now, the emergence in India of a particularly nasty form of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which renders even the last-resort drugs obsolete, could bring about an era of unstoppable infections. To contain the bacteria, South Asian governments must quickly reform their public health practices and medical manufacturers must fast-track the development of new drugs. But with the Indian political establishment prioritizing building up its lucrative private health sector over making costly public health reforms, and policies aimed at recalibrating drug research and development in the West stymied, the political will to accomplish the job is scarce.

In India, antibiotic use is virtually unregulated. Antibiotics are widely available without a prescription and, as in the United States, affluent people tend to consume the drugs whether medically necessary or not -- for everything from colds to diarrhea. Meanwhile, when ill, India's poor tend to scrape together a few rupees to buy a couple doses of antibiotic at a time, enough to quell their symptoms but not enough to clear their infections. Both patterns of consumption contribute to the development of drug-resistant bacteria. So, it is no wonder that, even before the new super-resistant strain was first documented, over 50 percent of the bacterial infections that occurred in Indian hospitals were resistant to commonly used antibiotics............"

Combating Antimicrobial Resistance: Policy Recommendations to Save Lives
, Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA)*
Correspondence: Robert J. Guidos, 1300 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 300, Arlington, VA 22209 ([e-mail]).

http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/52/suppl_5/S397.full

Antimicrobial resistance is recognized as one of the greatest threats to human health worldwide [1]. Drug-resistant infections take a staggering toll in the United States (US) and across the globe. Just one organism, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), kills more Americans every year (?19,000) than emphysema, HIV/AIDS, Parkinson's disease, and homicide combined [2]. Almost 2 million Americans per year develop hospital-acquired infections (HAIs), resulting in 99,000 deaths [3], the vast majority of which are due to antibacterial (antibiotic)-resistant pathogens. Indeed, two common HAIs alone (sepsis and pneumonia) killed nearly 50,000 Americans and cost the US health care system more than $8 billion in 2006 [4]. In a recent survey, approximately half of patients in more than 1,000 intensive care units in 75 countries suffered from an infection, and infected patients had twice the risk of dying in the hospital as uninfected patients [5]. Based on studies of the costs of infections caused by antibiotic-resistant pathogens versus antibiotic-susceptible pathogens [6–8], the annual cost to the US health care system of antibiotic-resistant infections is $21 billion to $34 billion and more than 8 million additional hospital days.

[Namvet67]

1. Antibiotic resistance

Antibiotics might as well be over the counter in America. Doctors hand them out for every runny nose and scratchy throat, knowing that they are ineffective against 90% of these conditions. Physicians(I am an M.D.) are lazy and unprofessional when trying to give the patient whatever they want instead of using the science behind the condition or the criteria for its diagnosis. I have been fighting a losing battle against overprescribing for 25 years.....now I see at least 10 MRSA cases per week....20 years ago it was 1 per month. Patients are to blame too by nagging doctors for antibiotics. Wait 'till the C dif resistance shows up in force in America....what a mess that will be. If my daughter gets MRSA or C dif I am going to find the nearest overprescribing physician and bitch-slap the face right off his skull.

[cbrer]

2. Mother Nature

Is a real M.F.!