SA experts are among an international group of scientists calling for better use of the world’s existing tools for preventing the spread of bacteria, saying wider access to vaccines, safe sanitation and better infection control could prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths each year from antibiotic-resistant “superbugs”.
An estimated 7.7-million people die from bacterial infections annually, and 4.95-million of those are associated with pathogens resistant to available antibiotics. Taking steps to prevent these infections from occurring could save 750,000 lives a year in low and middle income countries, according to The Lancet.
The very young, the very old and people with chronic health conditions are most vulnerable to the harm caused by antibiotic resistance, said the authors of a series of papers published in the journal.
SA data is limited, but there is evidence of extensive and growing antibiotic resistance in some the most serious infections found in hospital patients, said UCT professor of infectious diseases Marc Mendelson, one of the co-authors of the Lancet series.
The health department’s latest antimicrobial resistance surveillance report found 70% of blood stream infections with Klebsiella pneumonia are resistant to a class of antibiotics called cephalosporins and the proportion of infections that were not susceptible to carbapenems — usually reserved as the last resort treatment — doubled from 18% in 2018 to 36% in 2022.
The biggest bang for our buck in reducing this problem is actually through the simple infection prevention measures that we already have: clean water, safe sanitation, vaccination and preventing infections in hospitals with things like handwashing.”
— Marc Mendelson
Drug resistance is driven by the misuse of antibiotics, which speeds up the evolution of bacteria that are not affected by the medicines. Concern about the threat of antibiotic resistance is compounded by the sparse pipeline of new therapies in development.
“The biggest bang for our buck in reducing this problem [the threat of antimicrobial resistance] is actually through the simple infection prevention measures that we already have: clean water, safe sanitation, vaccination and preventing infections in hospitals with things like handwashing,” Mendelson said. “If we did that we could reduce deaths by providing people with the services they should be getting. It just requires political will,” he said.
“We are also trying to get people to wake up to the fact that if we don’t get onto this, the sustainable development goals are not going to be met,” he said.
UN member states agreed to strive to reach 17 sustainable development goals by 2030. They include targets for child survival and healthy ageing, which are more likely to be reached if patients have access to effective antibiotics, said series co-author Iruka Okeke from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.
“Effective antibiotics prolong lives, reduce disabilities, limit healthcare costs and enable other life-saving medical actions such as surgery,” she said.
“However, antimicrobial resistance is on the rise — accelerated by inappropriate use of antibiotics during the Covid-19 pandemic — threatening the backbone of modern medicine and already leading to deaths and disease, which would have once been prevented.”
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