More than half of life-threatening bacterial infections are now treatment resistant
A recent WHO (World Health Organisation) report has revealed that over half of life-threatening bacterial infections now have high rate of resistance to treatment. Data from 87 countries have generated this report; increasing the chance of common infections worldwide.
Studies surrounding antimicrobial resistance (AMR) have been trending since 2017 under the guidance of the Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System (GLASS). In collaboration with WHO, GLASS has recently concluded that 72 per cent of the global population is not only susceptible to life-endangering bacterial diseases but also proof to treatment. The study that had begun with 27 countries has now spread across 127 nations and has generated worthwhile data through digital interaction, surveys and graphical representation.
What’s alarming is that, these bacteria are not only highly contagious and risky but also dangerously resistant to diagnosis. To top it, they mainly affect patients who get admitted in hospitals for other treatments. They end up getting infected through bloodstreams. Some of the most life-claiming bacterial infections in this regard include Klebsiella pneumonia and Acinetobacter spp, both of which do not get cured even with last-resort antibiotics like carbapenems, resulting in fatality. How scary is that!
Apart from such serious ailments, other common bacterial infections such as Neisseria gonorrhoea (a sexually transmitted disease) have shown 60 percent resistance to its usual oral antibiotic called ciprofloxacin. Similarly, E. coli which causes urinary tract infections are resistant in 20 percent of cases to both first-line drugs such as ampicillin and co-trimoxazole and second-line treatments like fluoroquinolones.
Okay, so how can modern medicines fight such antimicrobial resistance? Well, for starters, the extent of microbiology testing and regular quality-assured data collection worldwide should go up. Moreover, global public awareness must be enhanced to ensure prevention.
The good news, however is that, most resistances have remained stable over the last couple of years, meaning they aren’t as life-threatening as previously thought and can get cured when instead of a single drug, various medicine combinations are implemented. In certain cases, hospitalisations and immediate treatments may also come in handy.
Understandably, countries with minimal testing coverage (meaning the low and middle-income countries such as India) have increased AMR rates and don’t also react to drug combinations either. This is inadvertently the result of high population density and poor healthcare facilities. For instance, AMR levels for E. coli in India is 42 percent, while it’s only 11 percent in the USA. As a result, WHO is now trying to universalise a group of antibiotics called ACCESS that are effective in case of a plethora of common bacterial infections with low AMR rates. WHO is also set to establish two long term measures, proper evidence generation and routine surveillance, that can be achieved through cutting-edge laboratories and research facilities.