“SA’s MRC links with global non-profit to combat antibiotic resistance”

“The SA Medical Research Council and the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (Find) are expected to sign a memorandum of understanding on antibiotic resistance, in an effort to boost collaboration in combating “superbugs”. Find is a global non-profit organisation that helps to develop diagnostic tests for poverty-related diseases.

Globally, an estimated 700,000 people die from drug-resistant strains of common bacterial infections each year. Scientists fear if available antibiotics are not used more judiciously, and new ones developed more rapidly, the world may return to the pre-antibiotic era when an infected scratch or insect bite could prove deadly. While limited data is available on the situation in South Africa, what little there is paints a grim picture.

About two thirds of tertiary hospital patients with Klebsiella pneumoniae bloodstream infections are resistant to first-line antibiotics, and about a third of hospital patients with bloodstream Escherichia coli have drug-resistant strains,” University of Cape Towninfectious disease specialist Marc Mendelson is quoted in the report as saying, citing data collated by the National Institutes of Communicable Diseases (NICD). “The bottom line is there are very high rates of antibiotic resistance in SA,” he said.”

Source: Medical Brief

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