Antimicrobial resistance happens when bacteria and other microbes that can cause infections gain the ability to resist treatment by antibiotics or other antimicrobial medicines. Pneumonia, urinary tract infections and sepsis are some of the infections that are usually treated with antibiotics. Newborn babies are particularly at risk from infections by antimicrobial resistant bacteria.
This is because of their immature immune systems. The risk to babies is greatest in low- and middle-income countries, where infections among newborns are 3 to 20 times higher than in developed countries. In 2020, 2.
4 million newborn babies died of sepsis in the first month of their lives. Most of these deaths happened in sub-Saharan Africa. Sepsis is an immune system overreaction to an infection somewhere in the body.
Researchers at the Ineos Oxford Institute for Antimicrobial Research carried out a study to investigate antimicrobial resistance-carrying bacteria recovered from surfaces in 10 hospitals from six low- and middle-income countries. Results are published in Nature Communications . The hospitals were in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda and South Africa.
In total, 6,290 hospital surface swabs were processed from intensive care units for newborns and maternity wards. The swabs were taken from: Many of the surfaces were found to be colonized with bacteria carrying antibiotic resistance genes. The largest growth was detected near sink drains.
These genes can confer resistanc.