A woman in the United States passed away after contracting a disease that was resistant to basically every antibiotic. Similar incurable bacteria are rapidly spreading all over the world. Reports by the US Center for Disease Control cite that the woman suffered from the Klebsiella bacteria.
The said bacterium is resistant to 26 varying antibiotics which were basically everything that the hospital she was staying at could provide her with. Professor Mike Sharland from the University of London at St. George's said that there is no way to tell the number of antibiotic-resistant infections currently existing.
The World Health Organization has launched a tracking project for the latter. The Center for Disease Control, however, states that about 90 percent of infections that are multi-resistant can still be eliminated by at least one type of antibiotic as a last resort.
It is reported that the woman acquired the bacteria when she was hospitalized in India for a broken leg. The misuse of antibiotics is said to have heightened her antimicrobial resistance levels remarkably. Researchers reported that last October, a third or more of blood infections in newborns that involved Klebsiella and other similar bacteria were practically untreatable due to how multi-resistant they were.
In the case of Acinetobacter, as great as 82 percent were almost untreatable. Sharland confirmed that this was not an issue solely limited to India. Findings published by his team showed that infections from the hospital affected on average 10 to 17 percent of babies that are treated in intensive care or neonatal units.
Sadly, the infection that lost the woman her life in Washington State could have been cured by a drug that is not licensed for use in the US but instead is available in Europe. The drug, Fosfomycin, has been around for years but has recently been replaced by more modern cephalosporins. However, researchers are looking into bringing back similar drugs whose newer versions do not function as well or fail entirely.
