Superbugs (Japanese Dictionary)
A British government study has shown that infections caused by drug-resistant bacteria those that cannot be controlled by antibiotics kill about 700,000 people worldwide annually. By 2050, this number could rise to over 10 million. “It’s just a fact of evolution the more antibiotics that are around, the more bacteria has been exposed to antibiotics, the more opportunity they have to acquire these resistances,” explains Sarah Fortune, a professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Although these drug-resistant bacteria, known as “superbugs,” are found around the world, India is considered to have the biggest problem because the factors that encourage superbugs are extensive and widespread in that country.
One cause is the overuse of antibiotics, which are frequently taken for illnesses that do not require them. Additionally, India’s pharmaceutical industry is releasing alarmingly high levels of antibiotics into the environment because the treatment facilities that process the industry’s wastewater do not effectively remove the drugs. Antibiotics also enter soil and water via animal waste because livestock are regularly fed the drugs to promote rapid growth and prevent disease. Poor infrastructure means India’s waterways are already polluted with bacteria, which develop resistance when exposed to antibiotics.
Solving the superbug problem is not as easy as simply restricting the availability of antibiotics, however. These medicines are sold without prescriptions in India because many communities do not have doctors available to prescribe them, and research has shown that lack of access to antibiotics would cause more deaths than infections by superbugs would. Therefore, many people believe minimizing the amount of antibiotics and bacteria in waterways and improving water quality locally are the keys to preventing the spread of superbugs globally. Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has been campaigning to clean the country’s contaminated Ganges River, and in 2017 India announced a plan to regulate antibiotic waste being released into the environment by drug manufacturers.
