India is the World's antibiotic popping capital

Times of India reports that India is the world's antibiotic-popping capital, recording the highest number of such pills consumed annually -13 billion against 10 billion in China and 7 billion in the US. As a result of such reckless use, deadly strains of lifetaking bacteria that are resistant to even the latest generation of antibiotics have been found to be rampant in India.

The first State of the World's Antibiotics report, to be released by the Washington-based Centre for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy (CDDEP), has found that bacteria strain Klebsiella pneumoniae's resistance to last-resort antibiotic class Carbapenems was a whopping 57% in India in 2014, up from 29% earlier. This is a dangerous superbug whose resistance rate in Europe is below 5%. Klebsiella's resistance to a variety of drugs is high -the bug is around 80% resistant to class III generation Cephalosporins, 73% to fluoroquinolones and 63% to aminoglycosides. For four of five drug classes tested, Klebsiella was over 60% resistant in India. With antibiotic use in creasing by 43% in India from 2000 to 2010, resistance to the deadly E Coli, which causes serious food poisoning, abdominal cramps and severe diarrhoea, too has been growing. For three different drug classes, E Coli resistance in In dia is currently over 80%.

R Laxminarayan, CDDEP director and report co-author said, "Rampant rise in antibiotic use poses a major threat to public health, especially when there's no oversight on appropriate prescribing".

"Carbapenem antibiotics are for use in the most dire circumstances -when someone's life is in danger and no other drug will cure the infection," said Sumanth Gandra, an infectious diseases physician, "If these trends continue, infections that could be treated in a week or two may become routinely life threatening."

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health-news/India-is-the-worlds-antibiotic-popping-capital/articleshow/48998137.cms