Superbugs becoming frequent travellers
International travel boom has helped spread germs and antibiotic resistance especially from India and China
Smallpox, syphilis, plague, cholera – some of the planet’s most notorious scourges drastically expanded their reach, thanks to unsuspecting travellers. With a record 3.77-billion air passengers worldwide in 2016, new disease-causing microbes have never traversed the planet faster. A woman in Reno, Nevada, who died recently from a rare bacterial infection is a tragic reminder. She picked up a variant of a germ called Klebsiella pneumoniae, probably while she was treated in India for a leg fracture and hip infection, health authorities said. Tests found the bacterium was resistant to 26 antibiotics. No available drug could stop it from poisoning her bloodstream weeks after she was admitted to a hospital in Nevada. The fatal case fits a pattern doctors in North America, Europe and Australia have observed for more than a decade: travellers who have spent time in India have an especially high risk of returning home with unwanted germs. Most often, the drug-evading bugs are ingested in fa...
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