NHS fears new killer superbug

NEW deadly superbugs resistant to the most powerful antibiotics are a "major public health concern", experts warned yesterday.

NHS doctors are worried after seeing inceasing numbers of patients carrying a mutant form of bug NHS doctors are worried after seeing inceasing numbers of patients carrying a mutant form of bug

NHS doctors are worried after seeing an increasing number of patients carry a mutant form of bug that can fight off even potent new drugs based on penicillin.

Scientists believe that there is an urgent need to discover how these superbugs are spreading in order to protect the public.

And although the NHS is managing to combat levels of MRSA and C. difficile by improving hygiene and screening patients, the new bugs could be much harder to beat. The warning comes as the World Health Organisation admitted that the failure to tackle superbugs could lead to a “nightmare scenario” in which the world has no new drugs to treat patients who are resistant.

The body said abuse of antibiotics for humans and in the food chain was fostering antibiotic resistance and threatening to take the world to an era before the discovery of penicillin in the 1920s.

Even the strongest bugs can't beat it

NHS superbug fears

Medical care could return to an age where simple infections do not respond to treatment and routine operations become life-threatening as a result of the reckless use of antibiotics.

In launching World Health Day today, the WHO has revealed that a staggering 25,000 people in the EU die from superbugs every year.

But for the UK, the new threat is not posed by traditional superbugs such as MRSA and C. difficile – experts are more concerned about the threat from drug-resistant forms of e.coli and pneumonia.

The e.coli bug can cause nasty urinary infections in hospital patients who are already very unwell. Doctors would usually give medicines known as carbapenems but an increasing amount of patients are carrying a mutant form of e.coli that does not respond.

Left untreated, e.coli in the blood stream and a new form of drug-resistant pneumonia can leave patients dangerously ill or even cause death.

Chris Thomas, the professor of molecular genetics at the University of Birmingham, said up to 10 per cent of people now carry a form of e.coli that is resistant to treatment. Although e.coli is carried by most humans and is found in the faeces, scientists want to know if the resistant form can be passed from person to person on dirty surfaces or even through the flow from sewage.

Prof Thomas said: “If a patient is resistant to the two main forms of antibiotic for e.coli, there is little that can be done. This bug can be very bad news. Now we need to know whether these bugs are spreading in the environment rather than from person to person”. Official figures from the Health Protection Agency show there were over 300 cases of bugs that were resistant to carbapenems last year – up from just 50 the previous year.

Dr David Livermore, director of the HPA antibiotic resistance monitoring and reference laboratory, said: “So much of modern medicine – from gut surgery to cancer treatment, to transplants – depends on our ability to treat infection.

“If resistance destroys that ability then the whole edifice of modern medicine crumbles.”

The NHS has made huge progress in slashing rates of common superbugs such as MRSA and C. difficile.

This has been achieved by testing people before they enter hospital, ensuring staff wash their hands regularly and also isolating patients who have the bugs.

GPs have been told to stop over-prescribing antibiotics for conditions they cannot treat in order to appease anxious patients.

The Government is stepping up campaigns against superbugs and will start to monitor rates of other bugs that could pose a threat, including e.coli.

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