PHM-Exch> Drug resistance now a “catastrophe”

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: South Centre <south at southcentre.org>

Drug resistance now a “catastrophe”
*By Martin Khor*
*Executive Director, South Centre*

Top health officials in the United Kingdom and United States have warned
that resistance of bacteria to medicines is a catastrophe and nightmare,
and as serious a threat as terrorism and climate change.

Many persons have lost family members because of an infection contracted
during an operation while in a hospital.   They died after being infected
by a superbug like MRSA that could not be eliminated by antibiotics.

This in essence is the problem of antibiotic resistance – that a bacterium
can evolve and change so that it become immune to the medicines given to a
sick patient and that are meant to kill it.

When a bacterium becomes resistant to one antibiotic, scientists develop a
more powerful antibiotic to kill it.  But bacteria can then change to also
become immune to the new medicine.

These bactieria have then developed multi-drug resistance.  And when the
dangerous pathogens out-run the drugs developed to combat them, humanity is
at risk of losing the race between life and death.

More and more diseases are becoming very difficult to treat or even
incurable, as the some pathogens are becoming immune to all antibiotics,
including the most powerful ones.

And equally problematic is that many of these incurable diseases are
contracted when patients stay in hospitals, especially during operations.


A major cause of the acceleration of antibiotic resistance is the
inappropriate use of the medicines, and the inadequate action (or even
inaction) of health authorities.

Drug companies often over-promote the use and sales of their medicines;
some doctors over-prescribe or wrongly prescribe antibiotics (sometimes for
the wrong ailment), patients who are not informed enough sometimes pressure
their doctors for antibiotics for a quick cure and often do not use the
medicines properly by not completing the course of medicines.

And there’s not enough action to make the public aware of the proper use of
antibiotics, and not enough regulations (or their implementation) to ensure
drug companies and medical personnel sell or prescribe the medicines
properly.

The alarm raised by the two top health officials was aimed at pushing the
regulators and also the patients into action.


Although there has been a great reduction in cases in English hospitals of
MRSA (methicillin-resistant *Staphylococcus aureus*) which is a skin
disease, this has been replaced by many times more cases of “gram-negative”
bacteria which are found in the gut.

These bacteria include *E coli* and *Klebsiella* (which causes pneumonia)
which are resistant to many drugs.  In the U.K. about 5,000 people die
annually from gram negative sepis, in which the bacteria infects the
patients’ blood; half the deaths were due to drug resistant organisms.

In Europe as a whole, “25,000 people die each year as a result of hospital
infections caused by resistant bacteria, adding €1.5 billion to hospital,
treatment and societal costs,” according to a 152-page report issued by
Davies.

Besides the new drug-resistant pathogens, resistance is also emerging in
old pathogens.  In particular the report cites tuberculosis, which has
re-emerged in Europe in the form of new strains of TB that are resistant to
many or even all available drugs. Another classical disease with increasing
drug resistance is gonorrhoea.

The report also warned of a “discovery void” with few new antibiotics
developed in the past two decades.  “While a new infectious disease has
been discovered nearly every year over the past 30 years, there have been
very few new antibiotics developed leaving our armoury nearly empty as
diseases evolve and become resistant to existing drugs,” says a press
release on the report.


While resistance is building up, there have been few new antibiotics.  No
new classes of antibiotics have been developed since 1987, and none are in
the pipeline across the world.



*Author: Martin Khor is the Executive Director of the South Centre.
Contact: **director at southcentre.org*

*To view other articles in SouthNews, please click
here<http://southcentre.us5.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=fa9cf38799136b5660f367ba6&id=c400a5e1a9&e=4fac633f11>.


For more information, please contact Vicente Paolo Yu of the South Centre:

Email yu at southcentre.org*
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