look news india
New Delhi: Currently, antibiotic resistance is increasing across the country, making it difficult to treat diseases like urinary tract infections, blood infections, pneumonia and typhoid. The bacteria that cause these diseases are no longer affected by common antibiotics. This has been revealed in the annual report released by the Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Network of the Indian Council of Medical Research-ICMR.
This seventh detailed report by the government has been prepared based on data collected from hospitals and clinics spread across India between 1 January 2023 and 31 December 2023. 99,492 samples were analysed from both public and private healthcare centres to prepare this report. The most important finding of this report is that E. coli bacteria found in ICUs and outpatient departments are resistant to multiple antibiotics. Antibiotics such as cefotaxime, ceftazidime, ciprofloxacin and levofloxacin have been found to be only twenty per cent effective against this bacterium. Similarly, resistance to Klebsiella pneumonia and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, used against pneumonia-causing bacteria, is increasing. Many antibiotics lose their effectiveness over time. For example, piperacillin-tazobactam was 56.8 per cent effective in 2017, but its effectiveness decreased to 42.4 per cent in 2023.
Commonly used antibiotics such as amikacin and meropenem are also losing their ability to fight bacterial infections effectively. ICMR researchers have found that Salmonella typhi, the bacterium that causes gastroenteritis, has developed more than 95 per cent resistance to fluoroquinolones used to treat its infections. The report emphasises the need for urgent action against growing resistance to antibiotics and strict controls on the use of antibiotics.
The report cautions against misuse of crucial antibiotics in the agriculture sector which is leading to the worsening of the resistance problem. The report urges strict measures to maintain the effectiveness of antibiotics essential for the maintenance of human and animal health. An earlier survey by the National Centre for Disease Control under the aegis of the Union Health Ministry found that bacteria are resistant to nearly half of the antibiotics prescribed in India.
