NDM-1: Potential Health Threat? |
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In recent months, the buzz word lingering in the healthcare circle has been NDM-1 or the New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase. NDM-1, a new gene in bacteria, has been dubbed as a new threat that can cause a breakdown in our fight against multi-drug resistant bug.
Researchers said recently they had found this new gene called New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase, or NDM-1, in patients in South Asia and in Britain. US health officials said on 11-Aug there had been 3 cases detected so far- all from patients who went to India on medical tourism. NDM-1 makes bacteria highly resistant to almost all antibiotics, including the carbapenems reserved for emergency use and to treat infections caused by other multi-resistant bugs like MRSA and C-Difficile. Experts fear that this new class of superbugs, could spread worldwide & inundating precious antibiotics.  According to AFP, researchers first discovered the NDM-1 gene in 2009 in a Swedish patient who was hospitalized in India. Scientists concluded in the Lancet that the potential of NDM-1 to be a worldwide public health problem is great, and co-ordinated international surveillance is needed. The first reported death due to this superbug with NDM-1 was a Belgium citizen of Pakistani origin who died in June this year found with bacterium IFN-1. In a study published in The Lancet, Karthikeyan Kumarasamy and Timothy Walsh attributed the new strain as a result of antibiotic abuse and global travel. Walsh and his international team collected bacteria samples from hospital patients in two places in Chennai and Haryana, and from patients referred to Britain's national reference laboratory from 2007 to 2009. They found 44 NDM-1-positive bacteria in Chennai, 26 in Haryana, 37 in Britain, and 73 in other sites in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. Several of the British NDM-1 positive patients had traveled recently to India or Pakistan for hospital treatment, including cosmetic surgery. News associating South Asia, particularly India, with the breeding of NDM-1 superbug obviously invoked an uproar as this effectively pointed the finger of blame at the country and likely to hurt the lucrative medical tourism industry. That said, the reported first death of a man in Brussels having fallen ill after returning from Pakistan has sounded the alarm bell. Microbiologist from University Hospital Brussels believed the NDM-1 enzyme appeared to have so far occurred in India and Pakistan. Is our healthcare system again facing yet another tough challenge in battling the superbugs..?  ********** |
