Superbug to chomp up medical tourism?

While Tamil Nadu was busy patting its back on the lengths it went to promote medical tourism, a ‘superbug’ stole into our backyard. Worse, it just wouldn’t stay home.
Carrying an enzyme New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase-1 (NDM-1), which makes a bacterium resistant to even the toughest of antibiotics,
the gene was identified last year by Prof Timothey R Walsh of Cardiff University, UK, in a Swedish patient who had travelled to Delhi — hence its name.
“We started seeing this bug about a year-and-a-half ago. It is believed to have originated in India, possibly because of our profuse use of antibiotics, both over the counter and prescription,” said a senior microbiologist in Chennai. The study, which in India was carried out in Chennai and Haryana, tested patients in hospitals who had the suspect symptoms. It found 44 isolates with NDM-1 in Chennai and 26 in Haryana.
“If this bug spreads unchecked, then we could have a serious problem on our hands, as these infections will be impossible to treat,” said the microbiologist. As of now, they have been found in hospitals, not in the community at large, he added. But, a patient who is otherwise healthy could also contract the bug, he warned.
NDM-1 was just a new variant of the normally prevalent hospital bugs, explained a microbiologist working in the field of isolating hospital bugs in Kerala. “Medical tourists are a little more vulnerable and hence the carriers,” she shrugged.
She believes that there is going to be “a hue and cry simply because the gene has been identified in India and Pakistan and several isolates have been found in Chennai and Haryana”. “Since we don’t have huge amounts of money to do research, we normally depend on Western funding to identify and carry out work in these areas,” she added.
Fuelling fears of a global endemic, The Lancet, which published the study, said, the potential of NDM-1 to be a worldwide public health problem was great, highlighted the meed of a co-ordinated international surveillance. “India provides cosmetic surgery for other Europeans and Americans and NDM-1 will likely spread worldwide,” it said. In Chennai, the Department of Microbiology, University of Madras and the Department of Microbiology, Apollo Hospitals, were part of the study.