Fatal resistance

Antibiotic Resistance has spread 'widely and wildly' among the disease causing bacteria. Resistant bacteria are everywhere; in hospitals, in community, inside our body -on our body, in agriculture, in animals, in the environment surrounding us,..... everywhere. You think of a place and they are there. They make the use of antibiotics ineffective, when we take them, when we are ill.

 "Down to Earth" magazine has brought out an issue with a cover story on "Antibiotic Resistance", which has contributions by Vibha Varshney, Dinsa Sachan and Sonal Matharu, who have talked to experts in this field, to bring into focus all aspects of this issue. Dinsa Sachan contacted me to elicit my views on the issue, which reflect in the cover story. We are thankful to her and the magazine for helping in spreading the awareness about the problem of the emerging threat of "Antibiotic resistance". - Dr. A.J. Tamhankar

The details of the article can be found at,     http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/fatal-resistance .

Research  partly funded by Indian Initiative for Management of Antibiotic Resistance  (IIMAR) wins Best Poster award

Last year under the IIMAR-ReAct cooperation scheme IIMAR had awarded some research grants to students doing research projects in the field of Antibiotic Resistance for their post-graduation. Out of these, Ms Pragya Shakya, an MD student at R.D. Gardi Medical College, Ujjain recently presented a poster based on her research at the 1^st Global forum on Bacterial Infections in New delhi, for which she received the Best Poster award.

The title of presentation was ‘Antimicrobial resistance among commensal E.coli isolated from stool samples of school-going children in Ujjain, India’.  Pragya found high  resistance to penicillins, cephalosporins,  tetracyclines  and  cotrimoxazole  among the isolated  commensal E.Coli. Strains resistant to penicillins and cephalosporins were  also more likely to be resistant to fluoroquinolones. ESBL production (13%)  among  commensals indicated its spread in the community. The paper also concluded that frequent  use of antimicrobials for self limiting  illnesses in the community can be a factor  responsible  for  development of resistance  in bacteria.

Community level surveillance of commensal bacteria appears to be a pre-requisite for designing antimicrobial stewardship programmes.

IIMAR congratulates Pragya.

1st Global Forum on Bacterial Infections in New Delhi, 

October 3-5, 2011. 

The 1st Global Forum on Bacterial Infections: Balancing Treatment Access and Antibiotic Resistance will focus on aspects of antibiotic access and resistance with particular relevance to low- and middle-income countries.
 The meeting will bring together policymakers, clinicians, public health programme managers and research experts from a variety of disciplines and sectors to introduce and evalutate policy innovations designed to work in low-resouce countries.