Bangalore: Scientists said that they suspected superbugs resistant to all of the antibiotics have taken hold in India, but their presence is not reported due to lack of proper diagnostic technology to identify them. According to a study published in Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, In 2015, around 6,70,000 peoples of European union were infected by a superbug, Staphylococcus epidermidis, resulting in 33,110 deaths.

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In the Bangalore Life sciences cluster, scientists see a parallel. ‘ A lot of deaths in India are, perhaps caused by superbugs, which we do not know anything about because healthcare workers do not have the proper diagnostic technology to identify the cause,” said Dr Taslimarif Saiyed, CEO and Director, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (known as C-Camp), Department of Biotechnology, Government of India. C-Camp was recently selected to join Carb-X. Carb-X is a global partnership of 10 international organizations to combat anti-microbial resistance in the world.

“Doctors are sometimes unable to identify specific pathogens, which are then treated with a range of antibiotics until the problem is solved. Sometimes this approach works, but in other cases, a range of antibiotics do not work. If the full range of antibiotics fails, it results in the loss of the patient,” said Dr. Saiyed, adding that hospitals do not study clinical isolates in an attempt to understand which pathogen was responsible for the death. He said ”sometimes doctors are unable to identify specific pathogens, which are then treated with various antibiotics till the problem is solved. Sometimes it works, but in other cases, antibiotics do not work. If all of the antibiotics fail, it results in the loss of the patient,” said Dr. Saiyed.

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