At the 1,000-bed not-for-profit Kasturba Hospital in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, doctors are grappling with a rash of antibiotic-resistant “superbug infections”.
This happens when bacteria change over time and become resistant to drugs that are supposed to defeat them and cure the infections they cause.
Such resistance directly caused 1.27 million deaths worldwide in 2019, according to The Lancet, a medical journal.
Antibiotics – which are considered to be the first line of defence against severe infections – did not work on most of these cases.
India is one of the countries worst hit by what doctors call “antimicrobial resistance” – antibiotic-resistant neonatal infections alone are responsible for the deaths of nearly 60,000 newborns each year.
A new government report paints a startling picture of how things are getting worse.
Tests carried out at Kasturba Hospital to find out which antibiotic would be most effective in tackling five main bacterial pathogens have found that a number of key drugs were barely effective.
