Wednesday, May 25, 2011

The super bugs are here!

My mother caught a staph infection some time ago when in the hospital.  It took almost a year for her to fully recover, and it is not entirely clear that it was the cocktail of antibiotics that did the trick.

Kevin Stovall, Wall Street Journal, April 7, 2011
Health experts renewed their warnings Thursday that a new form of superbug that gives bacteria the power to resist virtually all known antibiotics is spreading quickly, posing a global health threat.
The World Health Organization Thursday issued a plea for collective action to fight new superbugs like the New Delhi metallobeta-lactamase, or NDM-1 for short, warning that the threat is spreading fast.
NDM-1 enzyme destroys carbapenems, an important group of antibiotics used for difficult infections in hospitals, and has been found in a wide variety of bacterial types. New research published Thursday in the U.K. medical publication "The Lancet" shows NDM-1 is widespread outside the hospital environment in Delhi, India and is circulating in bacteria that inhabit drains and tap water, owing to sewage contamination. British researchers last August reported that infections involving NDM-1 had been found in patients in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Britain. ..
The danger is acute because the pipeline of new antibiotics is essentially empty. Some experts warn health-care provision is in danger of reverting back to a pre-antibiotic era in which hip replacements, care of pre-term babies and advanced cancer treatment are no longer possible.
Over the past three decades only two new classes of antibacterial medicines have been discovered, compared to 11 in the previous 50 years.

1 comment:

Liz Smith said...

We know that the reflexiones finales define all regarding the General Thoughts on Final Thoughts in a Holistic Sense. The World Health Organization Thursday issued a plea for collective action to fight new superbugs like the New Delhi metallobeta-lactamase.