‘I couldn’t hug or touch my mother’ - EU launches major push to tackle antimicrobial resistance

18 November 2024 4:46pm GMT

The European Union has launched a major push to tackle antimicrobial resistance as it struggles to meet its targets, the region’s health watchdog announced today. 

Infections that are resistant to antibiotics and other drugs caused by so-called superbugs, kill more than 35,000 people a year in the EU and more than a million globally.  

Cases have risen across the region since 2019, the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) said on Monday. At the same time, antibiotic consumption in the region has risen by 1 per cent, moving the region further away from the 20 per cent reduction target set for 2030.

In Europe, as in the UK, over 70 per cent of these infections are acquired in hospitals or care homes. 

While action against some superbugs had worked, others have spread rapidly. Instances of k. Pneumonia - a dangerous bacterial infection that can cause sepsis - increased by 60 per cent across EU countries over the reporting period, for example.

“We need to make a concerted effort to harmonise efforts to tackle antimicrobial resistance across member states,” Pamela Rendi-Wagner, director of the ECDC said.

The agency published 12 case studies from around the world to highlight the threat antibiotic resistance poses to ordinary people.

Peggy Lillis, a healthy, 56-year-old kindergarten teacher from Brooklyn, New York, was prescribed a standard short course of antibiotics to treat an infection following a routine root canal procedure in April 2010.

Six days later, she died from an antibiotic-resistant infection known as C.difficle, which can cause deadly diarrhoeal illness. 

C.difficle lives naturally in the body and is harmless to most people. 

But when someone takes a course of antibiotics - which kills both good and bad bacteria - it can grow out of control quickly, because there is not enough ‘good’ bacteria to keep it in check.

People on antibiotics are 7-10 times more likely to develop C.diff. It’s one of the reasons health professionals stress to only take the drugs when absolutely necessary. 

Ms Lillis was otherwise fit and healthy when she died. 

In another case, Mallory Smith, a young adult from Los Angeles, was born with cystic fibrosis (CF), but what killed her was a bacteria called Burkholderia cencopeapica. 

The faulty gene that causes cystic fibrosis disrupts the normal flow of salt and water in and out of the lungs and other organs. The imbalance results in thick, sticky mucus that builds up in the lungs, meaning germs thrive and multiply making any infection more dangerous. 

She caught Burkholderia cencopeapica at age 12, and the bacteria eventually killed her at 25. 

Over the 13-year period, the bacteria became resistant to every antibiotic Mallory’s doctors tried, and her lung capacity steadily diminished. 

She died following a lung transplant, in a last-ditch attempt to clear her body of the bacteria. 

Not everyone who requires an antibiotic-resistant infection will die but many life-long mental and physical scars. 

Aerti, a 25-year-old pharmacist from Athens, acquired a Klebsiella infection in hospital while undergoing treatment for leukaemia at just 13 years old. 

The strain of Klebsiella that Aerti was infected with is found mainly in southern and eastern European countries but is most common in Greece. It is resistant to almost all antibiotics, including a class of last-line treatments, known as the carbapenems.

To try and eliminate the bacteria, doctors were forced to halt Aerti’s chemotherapy and remove the catheter that was providing her with life-saving cancer drugs and nutrition - an extremely risky move given the severity of her diagnosis. 

Aerti was placed in an isolation ward for several weeks. “I couldn’t hug or touch my mother, it really devastated me,” she told the ECDC. 

After a course of last-line antibiotics, doctors finally cleared the infection from Aerit’s bloodstream, and she later recovered from cancer, too. “I am fully aware that my success story is dramatically close to the stories of other patients who did not win those battles,” she said. 

The ECDC is set to introduce new measures for its member states to follow in a bid to tackle AMR, which will mark the first time standardised guidelines in healthcare facilities have been rolled out across EU member states. 

They include a series of recommendations, including exceeding basic measures like prioritising hand-washing.

Unwashed hands are a major way in which doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers inadvertently pass resistant infections from one patient to another. 

The guidelines also encourage hospitals to build capacity for isolation rooms, so patients infected with resistant bacteria can’t spread the infection to others in the vicinity. 

“Fighting AMR means saving lives, protecting our health systems, and the foundations of modern medicine,” Pamela Rendi-Wagner of the ECDC said.

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