microbes could defeat us!

Health fraternity has been ringing the alarm over resistance to antimicrobial for so long, but all falls on deaf ears. You may surprise to know that resistance to antibiotics was identified even before the wonder drug of Fleming, going to market. The first clinical application of penicillin came 70 years back, but the discovery of a bacterial enzyme which is capable of destroying penicillin came a few years earlier that wonder drug. The microbes are always one step ahead. The microbes are always one step ahead. In 1960s it was cleared to the public that over use of antibiotics was driving the emergence of resistant species.
The interesting fact is, we already knew that how to combat the problem, which is to control the use of antimicrobials, and above all, ensuring that the patients are completing their courses, of antibiotic. But despite repeated appeals, we couldn't compete with doggedness of microbes. In 2010, resistant bacterial infections killed more than one lac people.
It is believed, that this danger started arising in 2008. When Klebsiella pneumoniae’s unusually tough strain was secluded, from a 59-year-old Swedish patient, who had been treated in a New Delhi hospital. The bacteria were unresponsive to even our most powerful antibiotics. To make it worse, the genes, which gave it this superpower, were found on a small ring of DNA that could be easily traded among different species of bacteria.
Since then, this so called New Delhi metallo beta lactamase (NDM-1) has turned up in more than 16 countries across the world. A study published in Lancet Infectious Diseases today shows the resistance factor has been spread to 14 different species of bacteria, including pathogenic varieties which are responsible for dysentery and cholera. Most bacteria holding the NDM-1 plasma Id is resistant to all, but the few of our most hopeless, atrocious antibiotics. One strain is immune to all of them. In a report published in 2010, the US Institute of Medicine described the antimicrobial resistance as global health and environmental disaster, while the WHO called the rise of so called NDM-1 a doomsday situation, where the world would be without antibiotics.These are not empty words. Without antibiotics, we have few options left. New antibiotics take around 10-20 years to develop, and of course, there are few in the pipeline. Vaccines are the most obvious alternative, but vaccination is not possible even in the most industrialized societies.
Scientists are not sitting quiet, they are trying to train viruses to chase down bacterial cells, for years, but Georgia is the only country in the world, which gives license for such bactiriophage therapy. An experimental procedure using a jet of ionized argon gas seems positive, though it can treat external infections only.
After a flooding of dramatic headlines, media’s interest in NDM-1 cut down. After all, in a world well-stocked with superbugs like MRSA, MDRTB, C diff, what was the use of another acronym? Media is tend to train their gun on highly pathogenic diseases, particularly those that kill in no time flat, they are not interest in such untreatable diseases, which are far less dramatic. The trouble with superbugs like NDM-1 is that once they get a foothold in hospitals, even minor surgerical procedures would be burdened with a much higher risk of serious postoperative complications.
Although previously campaigns in France and America, have achieved considerable declining in the prescription of antibiotics, their uncontrolled use in other countries has diluted those successes. Even if we control our habit of taking antibiotics, NDM-1 is here to stay. That may be enough to timely action called for by health fraternity 50 years back, but it's next to impossible, for us to shake the thinking that the microbes could defeat us.