Gert van der Hoek
In Memoriam - Editor, Senior Moderator
9 OCT, 2011,
100 million Indians could be carrying the superbug NDM-1
Timothy R Walsh , professor at Cardiff University, UK, and co-author of the controversial " superbug" study published last year in British medical journal 'The Lancet', tells Kounteya Sinha that NDM-1 is now a public health catastrophe.
How serious is the NDM1 threat for India and globally?
When we published our first paper just over a year ago, we aired our grave concerns that this would be ahuge issue for Indian patients. The recent studies from Sir Ganga Ram hospital, Delhi, and PGI Chandigrah reporting very high carriage of NDM-1 in Klebsiella and Acinetobacter bacteria respectively, have confirmed our previous studies. Extrapolating the data from our environmental study undertaken in New Delhi and combining this with the recent study of NDM-1 carriage from Pakistan, we estimate that the carriage rate of NDM-1 in India is between 100 and 200 million, which means that NDM-1 has become a very serious public health issue.
Globally, the cases of NDM-1 continue to increase - in the UK this week, there were newspaper reports citing 400 cases. With globalization, NDM-1 will continue to spread unchecked around the world and once established in higher enough numbers in a particular country, will further disseminate .
What could be the consequences?
Read more: India Times
100 million Indians could be carrying the superbug NDM-1
Timothy R Walsh , professor at Cardiff University, UK, and co-author of the controversial " superbug" study published last year in British medical journal 'The Lancet', tells Kounteya Sinha that NDM-1 is now a public health catastrophe.
How serious is the NDM1 threat for India and globally?
When we published our first paper just over a year ago, we aired our grave concerns that this would be ahuge issue for Indian patients. The recent studies from Sir Ganga Ram hospital, Delhi, and PGI Chandigrah reporting very high carriage of NDM-1 in Klebsiella and Acinetobacter bacteria respectively, have confirmed our previous studies. Extrapolating the data from our environmental study undertaken in New Delhi and combining this with the recent study of NDM-1 carriage from Pakistan, we estimate that the carriage rate of NDM-1 in India is between 100 and 200 million, which means that NDM-1 has become a very serious public health issue.
Globally, the cases of NDM-1 continue to increase - in the UK this week, there were newspaper reports citing 400 cases. With globalization, NDM-1 will continue to spread unchecked around the world and once established in higher enough numbers in a particular country, will further disseminate .
What could be the consequences?
Read more: India Times
