WHO lists 12 superbugs threatening human health

In the last few years, hospitals in India have recorded infections resistant to last-resort carbapenems and colistin antibiotics in their intensive care units. The list aims to encourage and mobilize innovators to conduct research and development on new antibiotics.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has released its first-ever list of a dozen superbugs that pose the greatest threat to human health.

But the Geneva-based institution also argues that the lack of new antibiotics has aggravated the problem of bacteria’s natural evolution – which can allow the pathogens to survive existing drugs.

“Governments and industry must work very closely on this if we are to find new weapons to fight growing antimicrobial resistance”, Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO’s assistant director-general for health systems and innovation, said Monday on a call with reporters.

“We need effective antibiotics for our health systems”. Numerous bacteria listed are already resistant to multiple antibiotics.

One big worry with superbugs is that if doctors do not have antibiotics at their disposal, things like hip replacements are suddenly much more risky than they would otherwise be.

It’s expected that antibiotic resistance, and the WHO’s list, will be one of the topics discussed at a preliminary conference of the G20 summit to be held later this week in Berlin, Germany.

“The pipeline is practically dry”.

Antibiotics can be too much of a good thing. WHO came up with the initiative to arrest the spread of pathogens that pose the greatest threat to public health.

World Health Organization has previously warned many antibiotics could become redundant this century, leaving patients exposed to deadly infections and threatening the future of medicine.

The WHO categorized the bacteria into three different types of categories including critical, high and medium priority.

Dubbed as the “nightmare bacteria”, Carbapenem Resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) was discovered in patients at Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Hospital previous year.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which are resistant to carbapenems. Enterobacteriaceae, carbapenem-resistant, ESBL-producingPriority 2: High4.

Enterococcus faecium, vancomycin-resistant: VRE is like the evil character Parasite that causes problem by touch, spread by touching contaminated patients or objects.

Colorized scanning electron micrograph of a white blood cell interacting with an antibiotic-resistant strain of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria.

Helicobacter pylori: These bacteria, which reside in the digestive tract, can cause gastric ulcers and are recognised as a bacterial carcinogen. These bacteria are also resistant to fluoroquinolone.

One of the main types of multi-resistant organisms found in Australia are the bugs that cause staph infections, which can be found both in hospitals and in the community. Streptococcus pneumoniae, penicillin-non-susceptible 11.

Haemophilus influenzae, ampicillin-resistant: This is the Joker of bacteria.

Current antibiotics might simply not get the job done.

According to Science magazine, the top three pathogens on the list – rated as “critical priority” – are gram-negative bacteria that are already resistant to multiple drugs, including enterobacteriaceae (the Times reports that E. coli, salmonella, and Yersinia pestis, which causes the bubonic plague, are all members of the enterobacteriaceae family).