Three Contract Rare Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria in New Zealand

Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB) said that three people tested positive as potential carriers of Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE).

CRE are a family of germs that are difficult to treat because they have high levels of resistance to antibiotics. Thirty people tested positive for CRE in the country between 2009 and 2014.

Drug Resistance – Antibiotic or Antimicrobial Resistance
Drug resistance is often a problem in malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, sexually transmitted diseases and hospital acquired diseases. Judicious use of antibiotics can control the problem.

‘Three people have left Christchurch hospitals, New Zealand, with a rare multi- antibiotic-resistant bacteria. According to experts, this is another sign of a growing world-wide problem.’

However, Auckland University Associate Professor Mark Thomas said the problem would become more difficult for the health sector to manage in the future.

"For those who know about it, it is a very frightening sign of what is to come,” Thomas said.

The professor said that though the three Canterbury patients may never have any issue with the germ, there was potential for CRE carriers to develop life-threatening infections and the numbers of CRE carriers would increase.

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Scarlet fever is caused by a Group A Streptococcus (GAS) bacteria that mainly affects children under 10 years of age and it can be treated with antibiotics.

"They are the beginning of what will inevitably be a lot more of these patients and at the moment we don't have safe, cheap, convenient antibiotics to treat those sorts of organisms with. So if a patient has an infection of the kidney or an abcess in the abdomen or an infection of their gall bladder or bile duct due to CRE, then doctors all around the world have great difficulty in treating these infections," Thomas added.

The presence of CRE was detected as part of routine screening while the patients were in hospital.

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These new antibiotics can successfully target the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus and the antibiotic-resistant strains commonly known as MRSA.

Source-Medindia

Frequent Travelers are at an Increased Risk of Antibiotic Resistance
The increase seen in resistance genes could have resulted from ingesting food containing resistant bacteria, or from contaminated water.