Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Growing Problem Worldwide.

Smallpox, syphilis, plague, cholera – some of the planet’s most notorious scourges dramatically expanded their reach thanks to unsuspecting travelers. With a record 3.77 billion air passengers worldwide last year, new disease-causing microbes have never traversed the planet faster. The recent case in Reno, Nevada of a woman who died 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, Washoe County health authorities said last week. Tests found the bacterium was resistant to 26 antibiotics. In fact, no available drug could stop it from poisoning her bloodstream weeks after she was admitted to the hospital in Nevada. A Klebsiella pneumoniae bacterium under a scanning electron microscope. Source: Janice Carr/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The fatal case fits a pattern doctors in North America, Europe and Australia have observed for more than a decade: travelers 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 fecally contaminated food or water, and take up residence in the intestines, where they are incorporated into the body’s normal bacterial flora. The stowaways can be dangerous if they escape from the bowel into other tissues, like the bladder or bloodstream. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-19/superbug-stowaways-india-travel-boom-spreads-dangerous-microbes