Top

Drug-resistant bacteria found scattered in soil

Researcher finds germs, which cannot be killed by drugs, in soil at homes, hospitals.

Hyderabad: Staphylococcus aureus, a pathogen which affects humans across the world and which has gained notoriety for developing resistance to a broad range of antibiotics, has been found in the soil of not just hospitals but even in residential areas in Hyderabad.

Studies so far have proved the presence of drug-resistant bacteria in raw chicken, meat, egg and vegetables as well as some water bodies in Hyderabad.
Ms T. Raga Sudha, a microbiology faculty at the Osmania University-affiliated Indira Priya-darshini Government De-gree College has reported the presence of the drug-resistant bacteria in soil.

The antibiotic resistant form of Staphylococcus aureus is called Methi-cillin Resistant Staphylo-coccus aureus and is divided as hospital acquir-ed and community acquired.

Ms Sudha found CA-MRSA in 16 per cent of resident area soils and HA-MRSA in 20 per cent of hospital soils of Hyderabad that she analysed as part of her UGC-funded study.

In a recent Europe-wide survey, 22.5 per cent of skin and soft tissue infections were found to be due to MRSA and a survey by the Indian Network for Surveillance of Antimic-robial Resistance found that 42 per cent samples collected from patient wounds had MRSA.

Ms Sudha said, “Staphy-lococcus aureus is a commonly found bacteria on the skin of humans. Once it enters the human body through wounds it can cause severe infections, some of which can be life threatening.

This bacteria is commonly found and hence can infect anyone and that it has developed resistance to a wide range of antibiotics is worrisome because treating diseases caused by it will become impossible with any antibiotic.

The gravity of my research is that these drug-resistant MRSA bacteria are now found in the soil in residential areas of Hyderabad. As a result, chances go up of people, especially kids, contracting disease due to the drug resistant MRSA which will be really tough to treat.”

Residents get PCB’s crackdown promise
Pollution by pharmaceutical companies and lack of strict action against violators by the Pollution Control Board has forced residents of Quthbullapur and nearby areas to file an online petition at Change.org addressed to the Hyde-rabad High Court and the National Human Rights Commission to intervene in the issue.

The residents secured a set of commitments from TSPCB officials who had visited some of the affected areas. After coming under pressure from residents, the TSPCB officials wrote down seven commitments.

One among them was that they would inspect suspicious companies including Dr Reddy’s Labs, Sri Krishna Pharmaceuti-cals, SMS Pharmaceu-ticals, Saraca Laborato-ries, JETL, Mylan, Vir-chow Laboratories, Aur-obindo Pharma, TSDF Dundigal and some concrete ready-mix units.

Officials invited representatives of resident associations to a meeting of a PCB task force. The main issue in the affected areas is foul smell emanating usually after midnight. As per a TSPCB official, pharma plants do not pass the gases from chemical processes through condensers but let them out into the open air.

( Source : Deccan Chronicle. )
Next Story