7 hours ago
(This post was last modified: 7 hours ago by C C.)
https://aeon.co/essays/antibiotic-resist...everywhere
EXCERPT: India is the accelerant of the global antimicrobial resistance crisis. Weak governance of pharmaceuticals, easy access to antibiotics, a high burden of infection driven by gaps in sanitation and health infrastructure, prolific antibiotic use in agriculture, and industrial pollution from pharmaceutical and other waste streams have combined to speed the rise and spread of resistant bacteria.
In a connected world, those microbes and resistant genes will not remain local.
They may travel in the gut of an unwitting tourist or circulate through the body of a worker in India. But resistance is not contained within individual bodies. It moves through wider systems, from sewage and waste to farms, food chains and global trade. Superbugs emerge in densely packed farms outside India’s megacities and in shrimp ponds supplying supermarkets in the United States. There, antibiotics do more than treat disease. They help sustain intensive production, deliver cheap protein, protect farmers’ incomes and secure corporate profit.
Resistant bacteria also gather around pharmaceutical manufacturing plants in South India. Wastewater from some of these facilities has repeatedly been found to contain antibiotic residues and resistance genes. At the same time, some manufacturers produce substandard or spurious antibiotics for both foreign and domestic markets. These are two distinct routes into the same problem. Environmental contamination exposes bacteria to a mixture of chemicals and low levels of antibiotic residues, helping the hardiest survive and multiply. Poor-quality drugs allow bacteria to persist, making treatment less effective next time. Either way, the phenomenon is the fuel behind MRSA bacteria, drug-resistant tuberculosis, and the highly resistant strains of E coli, Klebsiella and Acinetobacter. Then, such microbes and their resistance genes cross borders through travel, trade, food systems, displacement, conflict and global supply chains.
[...] Across India, antibiotics are regarded as ‘strong medicine’: a fast and familiar solution when there is neither time nor money for a proper diagnosis and medically supervised treatment. Decades of routine use by millions of Indians – rich and poor alike – have reinforced the sense that antibiotics work and are just part of day-to-day life. They are cheap, widely available through thousands of streetside pharmacies and, for most people, seemingly free of immediate side effects.
When we asked Sushil why he dispenses antibiotics so readily, his answer was direct: ‘I cannot risk a person’s life. If someone comes from the village and doesn’t have money, what will I do? I’ll give them antibiotics for three days. I cannot just let go of their life.’ (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPT: India is the accelerant of the global antimicrobial resistance crisis. Weak governance of pharmaceuticals, easy access to antibiotics, a high burden of infection driven by gaps in sanitation and health infrastructure, prolific antibiotic use in agriculture, and industrial pollution from pharmaceutical and other waste streams have combined to speed the rise and spread of resistant bacteria.
In a connected world, those microbes and resistant genes will not remain local.
They may travel in the gut of an unwitting tourist or circulate through the body of a worker in India. But resistance is not contained within individual bodies. It moves through wider systems, from sewage and waste to farms, food chains and global trade. Superbugs emerge in densely packed farms outside India’s megacities and in shrimp ponds supplying supermarkets in the United States. There, antibiotics do more than treat disease. They help sustain intensive production, deliver cheap protein, protect farmers’ incomes and secure corporate profit.
Resistant bacteria also gather around pharmaceutical manufacturing plants in South India. Wastewater from some of these facilities has repeatedly been found to contain antibiotic residues and resistance genes. At the same time, some manufacturers produce substandard or spurious antibiotics for both foreign and domestic markets. These are two distinct routes into the same problem. Environmental contamination exposes bacteria to a mixture of chemicals and low levels of antibiotic residues, helping the hardiest survive and multiply. Poor-quality drugs allow bacteria to persist, making treatment less effective next time. Either way, the phenomenon is the fuel behind MRSA bacteria, drug-resistant tuberculosis, and the highly resistant strains of E coli, Klebsiella and Acinetobacter. Then, such microbes and their resistance genes cross borders through travel, trade, food systems, displacement, conflict and global supply chains.
[...] Across India, antibiotics are regarded as ‘strong medicine’: a fast and familiar solution when there is neither time nor money for a proper diagnosis and medically supervised treatment. Decades of routine use by millions of Indians – rich and poor alike – have reinforced the sense that antibiotics work and are just part of day-to-day life. They are cheap, widely available through thousands of streetside pharmacies and, for most people, seemingly free of immediate side effects.
When we asked Sushil why he dispenses antibiotics so readily, his answer was direct: ‘I cannot risk a person’s life. If someone comes from the village and doesn’t have money, what will I do? I’ll give them antibiotics for three days. I cannot just let go of their life.’ (MORE - missing details)