A Looming Health Crisis

Context: India being the largest consumer of antibiotics in the world, must acknowledge the problem of silent pandemic called Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR).

Challenges with Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR):

• Ineffectiveness of available antimicrobial drugs: Globally, about 35% of common human infections have become resistant to available medicines leading to 700,000 people die every year
  • As per Lancet- an estimated 58,000 new-born children die annually from sepsis in India alone.
• Rising Resistance: Resistance to second and third-line antibiotics will double between 2005 and 2030.
• Factors responsible:
  • Misuse and overuse of antimicrobials: A treatment facility in India catering to drug manufacturers found concentrations of antibiotics high enough to treat over 40,000 people daily!
  • Environment and water pollution: The release of un-metabolised antibiotic drugs in effluents from households and pharmaceutical facilities, and agricultural run-off, propagates AMR.
  • Inadequate wastewater treatment facilities: India has the capacity to treat only about 37% of the sewage generated annually.
  • Untreated water containing antimicrobials can also affect wildlife.

Measures to check AMR:

• Identified as the emerging issue of environmental concern:
  • Highlighted in the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP)’s 2017 Frontiers Report.
  • UN Environment Assembly pressed the need to further understand the role of environmental pollution in spreading AMR.
• One Health AMR Global Action Plan (GAP): by UN agencies to addresses the AMR issue in human, animal, and plant health and food and environment sectors.
• Draft for setting the residues of 121 antibiotics in treated effluents: from drug production units was issued by Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC)
• Inter-ministerial Steering Committee on AMR: was constituted by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and MoEF&CC with representation from the World Health Organisation and UNEP.

Way Forward

• Strengthen environmental dimensions: of Centre and State governments plans to tackle antimicrobial resistance.
• Promote measures that address known AMR hotspots: such as hospitals and manufacturing and waste treatment facilities.

Conclusion: Governments need to factor in new research and bring in businesses and consumers as active stakeholders for curbing the spread of AMR.