Super germs rule Hyderabad: Drug-resistant Klebsiella is alarming doctors

Hyderabad: The presence of the drug-resistant Klebsiella, the bacteria that contaminated saline bottles at Sarojini Devi Eye Hospital resulting in five patients nearly losing their sight earlier this month, is alarming doctors.

The incident on June 30 saw 13, out of a total of 21 patients, contracting severe infection in their eyes. Studies conducted in Hyderabad, over the years, have found drug resistant bacteria not just in hospitals (including in intensive care units) but also in samples taken from patients’ wounds, blood, body fluids, soil in residential areas, surface water bodies and even in meat, vegetables, milk and poultry products.

Two separate studies conducted recently, one in the Osmania General Hospital and the other at the Owaisi Hospital and Research Center, found drug-resistant bacteria in samples taken from patients.

At the Osmania General Hospital, the four senior surgeons who conducted the study on Surgical Site Infections (SSI), found that 22 per cent of 450 surgery patients had contracted SSI.

Of these, 25 per cent were due to Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus bacteria and 18 per cent were due to Klebsiella, a bacteria which is resistant to third-generation antibiotics used to treat infections caused by multidrug resistant bacteria called carbapanems; 23 per cent of the cases were due of E. coli.

In the study at Owaisi Hospital and Research Center by Mr P.A. Nagarjun of Osmania University, it was found that 34 per cent of the 129 Staphylococcus Aureus bacteria isolated strains were Methicillin resistant. A varying percentage of this Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus Aureus strains was resistant to 14 different types of antibiotics.

Union health minister J.P. Nadda, in a reply to a question raised in Parliament in December 2015 on antibiotic resistant bacteria, had said that more than 50 per cent of bacterial isolates of Klebsiella and E.Coli were found to be resistant to the currently used third generation antibiotics called Cephalosporins.

A senior official from the regional office of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in Hyderabad said, “Over the years a steady rise has been witnessed in antibiotic resistant bacteria, including in Tuberculosis, which has now prompted the Central government to develop medical infrastructure in hospitals in district levels to isolate and treat drug-resistant TB. In tribal areas, malaria is getting difficult to treat due to the presence of Qunoline resistant bacteria.”