March 9,2013-The patient is going into shock. His blood pressure is falling. Antibiotics don’t seem to work. Dr Sumit Ray sprinted to the intensive care unit in response to the urgent call. He had dreaded this moment ever since the 22-year-old car crash victim was admitted to Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Delhi: His blood culture, done on admission, had detected bacteria specimens resistant to a range of antibiotics.
Over the last five days, his head injury had healed but a spiking fever had appeared, suggesting infection. Through the glass wall, Ray, vice chairman of critical care at the hospital, could see the ashen pallor that made the patient’s face blend with the sheet. “He’s sliding into a septic crisis. Soon, the infection will turn unstoppable,” he sighed.
Who can tell what germ is hiding in one’s body, awaiting its chance to create havoc? A nagging fever that spikes to 103. Painful rashes that turn into pus-filled pockets. Black, bloody or tarry stool that just won’t clear up. Swollen glands that look angry and enlarged. You know your antibiotic is not working if within 24-48 hours your body gives tell-tale signals of germs outsmarting drugs. If you don’t pay heed, they will invade your bloodstream, driving you into a life-threatening crisis. Sounds like a science fiction nightmare but it’s more real than you might think.
Armed with antibiotics, ‘miracle’ drugs of the modern era, doctors today know practically no limits to the range of patients they can help. All that progress is suddenly being challenged by invisible legions of malevolent bacteria, one millionth of a millimetre in size. Hospitals are turning into hotbeds of infection. And the drug development pipeline for new antibiotics is running dry the world over. India is in a particularly tight spot. Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has faced fierce questioning during the current Budget Session of Parliament on the rising tide of antibiotic resistance (ABR) in the country. An urgent question hangs over the future: What if antibiotics do not work anymore?
The World Health Organization (WHO) has raised alarm on the “serious, growing, and global threat” since 2010. At the 2013 World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos in January, WHO Director General Margaret Chan warned that bacteria are becoming so resistant to common antibiotics that it could mean “the end of modern medicine as we know it”. With ABR snuffing out 100,000 lives in America, 80,000 in China and 25,000 in Europe a year on average, WEF considers it “one of the chief threats to human health” that the world is “mostly unprepared to cope with”.
