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Deadly superbugs thrive as access to antibiotics falters in India
BBC ^ | 06 01 2025 | Soutik Biswas

Posted on 06/02/2025 6:04:44 PM PDT by yesthatjallen

It's a grim paradox, doctors say.

On the one hand, antibiotics are being overused until they no longer work, driving resistance and fuelling the rise of deadly superbugs. On the other hand, people are dying because they can't access these life-saving drugs.

A new study by the non-profit Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP) looked at access to antibiotics for nearly 1.5 million cases of carbapenem-resistant Gram-negative (CRGN) infections across eight major low- and middle-income countries, including India, Brazil and South Africa. CRGN bacteria are superbugs resistant to last-line antibiotics - yet only 6.9% of patients received appropriate treatment in the countries studied.

India bore the lion's share of CRGN infections and treatment efforts, procuring 80% of the full courses of studied antibiotics but managing to treat only 7.8% of its estimated cases, the study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal reports. (A full drug course of antibiotics refers to the complete set of doses that a patient needs to take over a specific period to fully treat an infection.)

Common in water, food, the environment and the human gut, Gram-negative bacteria cause infections such as urinary tract infections (UTIs), pneumonia and food poisoning.

SNIP

(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: antibiotics; india; superbug
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1 posted on 06/02/2025 6:04:44 PM PDT by yesthatjallen
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To: yesthatjallen

2 posted on 06/02/2025 6:07:44 PM PDT by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is opinion or satire. Or both.)
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To: yesthatjallen

With jet travel and indifferent immigration these antibiotic resistant germs will be in America soon enough. Set loose the four horseman and let the apocalypse begin.


3 posted on 06/02/2025 6:13:10 PM PDT by Pelham (President Eisenhower. Operation Wetback 1953-54)
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To: yesthatjallen

My bet is these “superbugs” were created in a lab to create demand for “supervaccines.”


4 posted on 06/02/2025 6:14:46 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Democrats are the Party of anger, hate and violence.)
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To: yesthatjallen

Propaganda and blackmail. Nice folks we’re dealing with here.


5 posted on 06/02/2025 6:18:06 PM PDT by AndyJackson
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To: yesthatjallen

And we pay them to make our drugs?


6 posted on 06/02/2025 6:21:10 PM PDT by HYPOCRACY (Long live The Great MAGA Kangz!)
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To: yesthatjallen

The medical community brought this whole problem on by itself with their casual, indiscriminate use of antibiotics for so long.

And it’s not like there weren’t people warning about this, but most of it came from the natural health community which the mainstream medical community looks down on as nothing more than a bunch of witch doctors.

Except for the inconvenient fact that they’ve been right far more often than not about health and the indiscriminate use of pharmaceuticals.


7 posted on 06/02/2025 6:27:18 PM PDT by metmom ( He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon." Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.”)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
My bet is these “superbugs” were created in a lab to create demand for “supervaccines.”

Considering what we've experienced the last several years, it wouldn't surprise me in the least.

The depths of evil men are willing to sink to in order to gain power and money is mind blowing.

8 posted on 06/02/2025 6:29:11 PM PDT by metmom ( He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon." Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.”)
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To: yesthatjallen

Crap. The majority of the world’s manufacture of antibiotics takes place in India.


9 posted on 06/02/2025 6:57:57 PM PDT by blackdog ((Z28.310) Dogs are with us briefly. Politicians last on forever. Listen to your dog. )
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To: blackdog

Wash your pills before using????


10 posted on 06/02/2025 7:16:27 PM PDT by hal ogen (First Amendment or Reeducation Camp?)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

The term “superbug” is a lie. Typically antibiotic-resistant organisms are degenerate mutants that by some fluke of their degeneration are protected from the antibiotic. It’s been many years since I read up on it, but as an example there are molecular gateways in cells that are used to bring certain types of nutrients in. One antibiotic might use such a gateway to access the bacteria to destroy it; a mutation that destroys the gateway thus protects the organism from being killed by the antibiotic. Assuming the cell can synthesize what it needs the loss of the gateway is not fatal, and is helpful in the immediate context of fighting off the antibiotic. But it’s not a superbug. It’s a cripple. I read of a number of such examples, and no cases of a bacteria magically gaining antibiotic resistance through some sort of gain of function.


11 posted on 06/02/2025 7:33:47 PM PDT by EnderWiggin1970
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To: EnderWiggin1970

One other point - the reason we can safely conclude these superbugs are cripples and not superior pathogens is that they tend to exist solely in environments where antibiotics are being used with some frequency, eliminating their competition. But they are not spreading across the landscape. That is, natural selection is not favoring them in the general environment as it should be if they were really an overall improvement. That’s why despite decades of fearmongering about “superbugs” running wild they remain a niche concern in areas where antibiotics create specialized selection factors.


12 posted on 06/02/2025 7:37:21 PM PDT by EnderWiggin1970
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To: EnderWiggin1970
Bacterial Resistance to Antibiotics—A Case of Un-Natural Selection - figure 1 has a helpful overview of biomolecular pathways used by antibiotics and summarizes some of the mutational defects leading to resistance.
13 posted on 06/02/2025 7:51:37 PM PDT by EnderWiggin1970
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To: yesthatjallen

Geee. A country that makes antibiotics, and distributes them for free suddenly notices antibiotic-resistant bugs.

Who’d a thunk?


14 posted on 06/02/2025 8:01:32 PM PDT by VanShuyten ("...that all the donkeys were dead. I know nothing as to the fate of the less valuable anima)
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To: VanShuyten

I’ve long seen India as an unsanitary country. There are lots of videos showing people defecating anywhere and everywhere. The people of India must have a robust immune system considering their conditions. Outside of India those pathogens could cause trouble if they’re easily spread.


15 posted on 06/02/2025 8:28:13 PM PDT by yesthatjallen
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To: yesthatjallen

I read once, in an old medical book, where before antibiotics they would administer poison “enough to kill the disease but not the patient”.


16 posted on 06/02/2025 9:35:21 PM PDT by rottweiller_inc (Lupus urbem intravit. Fulminis icShouldn't shetu vultures super turrem exanimat.)
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To: EnderWiggin1970

I very rarely finish a course of antibiotics. When it is obvious I am better, I stop taking the prescription. My logic being I don’t want to kill off all the bacteria in my system as most of it does resist foreign bacteria. If I destroy my friendly bacteria that clears the way for stronger alien (for lack of a better word) to gain a foothold.

Demanding a full course of antibiotics be taken no matter what is a salt the earth approach.


17 posted on 06/02/2025 9:54:45 PM PDT by lastchance (Cognovit Dominus qui sunt eius.)
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To: yesthatjallen

Fake article. Trump wasn’t blamed.


18 posted on 06/03/2025 4:25:57 AM PDT by EQAndyBuzz (TDS Much?)
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To: lastchance
You set yourself up to be a petri dish doing that. The last living bacteria are the resistant ones.
Doctors have been proscribing probiotics to support the good bacteria in your system while killing off the disease causing one.
19 posted on 06/03/2025 4:44:26 AM PDT by Varda
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To: rottweiller_inc
I read once, in an old medical book, where before antibiotics they would administer poison “enough to kill the disease but not the patient”.

I think they call it chemotherapy.
20 posted on 06/03/2025 5:15:58 AM PDT by Old Yeller (On judgement day, you’ll wish you were biblically correctly, not politically correct.)
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