Antimicrobial Resistance Associated with Infectious Diseases

Abstract

The silent pandemic of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has been a lethal enemy of mankind for years. Unfortunately, humans have themselves been responsible for the troublesome and worsening trends of AMR. The lack of sanitation and hygiene, lack of awareness among the public, inadequate infection prevention, and control policies in hospitals, indiscriminate antimicrobial use in humans, animals, as well as the environment, and irresponsible disposal of these antibiotics into the environment have made matters worse. Our armamentarium against these pathogens is diminishing gradually with hardly any antibiotics left to treat the patients. Thus, the World Health Organization recently developed the significance pathogen list to rank the development of drugs for the most common but difficult-to-treat pathogens across the world. Carbapenem-unresponsive; Klebsiella spp., Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Acinetobacter baumannii, MRSA, and VRE are some of the organisms on the list. Although research is ongoing to discover new molecules to fight these superbugs and cure the infections caused by them, the current pressing main concern is to rectify our practices by following judicious use and proper disposal of antibiotics, working toward the strategic priorities of creating awareness, strictly complying with infection prevention and control protocols along with integration and collaboration among all the sectors (human, animal, environment, research) as identified under the country’s accomplishment strategy on fight against drug-unresponsive superbugs (NAP-AMR) in India.