Each year, from November 18 to 24, the World Antibiotic Awareness Week is observed and aims to increase global awareness on antibiotic resistance and encourage best practices among public, health workers and policymakers
The Sassoon general hospital — the largest government hospital in the state — has been able to bring down hospital-acquired infections with resistant bugs.
MRSA — methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus — is a feared bug worldwide and is the cause of many hospital-borne infections in ICU. MRSA is a bacterium that causes infections in different parts of the body and is tougher to treat because of resistance to some commonly used antibiotics.
Sassoon hospital has been able to reduce percentage of MRSA from 61 per cent in 2018 to 48 per cent in 2019, Dr Rajesh Karyakarte, head of Department of Microbiology at B J Medical College and Sassoon General Hospital, told The Indian Express.
“Resistance to antibiotics is a problem worldwide and even at Sassoon hospital, we cannot say hospital-acquired infections have reduced. What is promising and positive is that important parameters like MRSA strain is now being reduced,” Dr Karyakarte said.
“Statistically it’s an important step as we have been able to reduce incidence of MRSA, which is an indicator of hospital-acquired infection activities. Sassoon hospital’s acquired infection control committee along with clinicians have adopted good practices and constant care to ensure a positive development,” Dr Ajay Chandanwale, Dean of the hospital, said.
“Our committee tries to rapidly identify such germs and train personnel to reduce hospital-acquired infection. We generally get patients from other hospitals at a terminal stage, who have low immunity levels and are admitted in ICUs. They can get hospital-acquired infections and hence control practices are very important — we have a robust policy towards that end,” Dr Karyakarte added.
Each year, from November 18 to 24, the World Antibiotic Awareness Week is observed and aims to increase global awareness on antibiotic resistance and encourage best practices among public, health workers and policymakers. Dr Raman Gaikwad, consultant of infectious diseases at Sahyadri hospital, said overuse and misuse of antibiotics in human and animal health have led to the spread of antibiotic resistance.
Antimicrobial resistance in hospitals hampers the control of infectious diseases and threatens a return to the pre-antibiotic era, Dr Renu Bharadwaj, former head of Department of Microbiology at Sassoon hospital warned. Dr Nita Munshi, secretary of hospitals infection control society, Pune forum, stressed that what is crucial is, each nursing home and hospital comes out with its own antibiotic policy based on data generated there.
NCCS ties up with AFMC, FSSAI
Treating antimicrobial resistance as a national priority, the Department of Biotechnology expanded the mandate of National Centre for Microbial Resource at NCCS Pune to function as bio-repository for resistant microbes/infective agents (bacteria and fungi) and to carry out collection, storage, maintenance, preservation and characterisation of these microbes across the country. The announcement was made in September last year and the repository is now functioning, Dr Yogesh Shouche, principal investigator at National Centre for Microbial Resource at NCCS, said. “It has established linkages with different antimicrobial resistance networks like the ones in Maharashtra, Kerala and Delhi. It has also developed tie-ups with AFMS and FSSAI to receive antimicrobial resistance isolates from their laboratories. Currently, the repository has around 300 isolates from different hospitals in Maharashtra, Pune and Solapur,” Dr Shouche added.
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