Dame Sally Davies, England's CMO, expressed concern regarding the evolution of antibiotic resistance in the Mirror days after news broke of a Nevada woman dying due to an infection resistant to 26 antibiotics.
The rise of antibiotic resistance could greatly complicate the safety of common surgical procedures and chemotherapy in the future. Patients who undergo these treatments need antibiotics to protect them from harmful bacteria as such procedures increase their vulnerability to infection.
"This tragic death is not a one-off. If we don't speed up efforts to tackle drug-resistant bugs, there will be more," said Dr. Davies, according to the Mirror, adding that the global threat of antibiotic resistance is comparable to climate change. "Imagine a future where cancer is untreatable because chemotherapy is ineffective. And simple ops like hip replacements and caesareans are very risky because of infection."
The unnamed Nevada woman was in her seventies and had previously traveled to India — where multidrug-resistant bacteria are more common — for an extended period of time. In India, the woman was hospitalized for a bone infection of the right femur and hip following a right femur fracture. After being admitted to an acute care hospital in Reno on Aug. 18, clinicians detected an infection with carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae — specifically Klebsiella pneumoniae — resistant to all 26 different antibiotics available in the U.S.
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