Drug resistant microbes are getting bred by Indian pharma factories [corrected from "pharmacies"] through their own carelessness [1]. I think it's high time WHO or some such agency got more powers to penalize the perpetrators beyond the jurisdiction of the country. If these bugs start in one place, people on the other side of the globe get affected quickly too. At the moment, it seems that the best the west can do is not buy from factories that pollute. But this measure is insufficient.
The article was about fungal infections, not bacterial infections. In both cases the amount of both antibiotics and anti-fungals used by humans is small relative to their use in agriculture. That may be an easier place to start, although it doesn't preclude sanction against whatever bad practices are described in your linked video (didn't watch).
The video is about effluents form the pharma industry. The scale dwarfs any abuse by both human patients and animal farming. I have modified my comment above because I had used the wrong word.
The only effective way to reduce use of anti-fungals in agriculture is to develop new resistant varieties of plants, but that is sadly blocked by people unreasonably fearing gmo.
There was a big scandal a few years back, with a compounding pharmacy I think was in the northeastern US, which had some issue where they were contaminating medication with mold. It was being injected into patients, who were then having very diverse and horrible problems over time.
Boycotting Indian manufactured medication is probably neither feasible nor a solution. Nuances of regulation matter.
I remember a horror story about how patients would say their psych meds didn't work. Because the patients were, you know, mentally ill, nobody took it seriously. It turned out the FDA had approved the drug based on testing only some of the dosages, and the one that was problematic was not dissolving like it was supposed to.
In India, Mucormycosis, a rare fungal infection is being seen in patients recovering from Covid-19. It has been declared an epidemic I believe. Doctors believe that high blood sugar and an indiscriminate use of steroids to reduce Covid-19 inflammation is linked to the spread.
This isn't surprising to me. In India a lot of state governments are sending covid pill packs to citizens which really don't do anything for covid and contain things like hydroxychloroquine, remdesivir, zinc, other steroids, and other blood thinners.
even the AIMS protocol doesn't recommend against drugs and techniques that the rest of the world has rejected almost a year ago. My partner treats covid in the US and has been doing consults to patients in India. Most of their work is telling patients to ignore the pills their doctors or government has been sending, although they rarely listen.
I wouldn't be surprised if a large chunk of the covid negative or mild covid population is on steroids.
Systemic corticosteroids are strongly recommended for patients by WHO. I see from here https://www.indiatoday.in/coronavirus-outbreak/story/remdesi...
that also budesonide is recommended for patients with mild symptoms and the usage of is backed up by recent studies.
I do not think that the problem is steroid usage by itself but depressing lack of even basic hygiene even in hospitals.
PS. Blood thinning is standard procedure in COVID-19 care for many hospitals, dunno how reasonable at home without any tests. Remdesivir is injected, I do not believe that it is distributed. Perhaps you meant ivermectin?
> Not all of our vulnerability is the fault of medicine preserving life so successfully. Other human actions have opened more doors between the fungal world and our own. We clear land for crops and settlement and perturb what were stable balances between fungi and their hosts. We carry goods and animals across the world, and fungi hitchhike on them. We drench crops in fungicides and enhance the resistance of organisms residing nearby. We take actions that warm the climate, and fungi adapt, narrowing the gap between their preferred temperature and ours that protected us for so long.
> That mutual coexistence is now tipping out of balance. Fungi are surging beyond the climate zones they long lived in, adapting to environments that would once have been inimical, learning new behaviors that let them leap between species in novel ways. While executing those maneuvers, they are becoming more successful pathogens, threatening human health in ways—and numbers—they could not achieve before.
Still early stages, but signs point to fungi becoming deadlier.
It's a bit of creative writing, mostly. Fungi evolve, that's what they do. And they evolve very rapidly. They also have great staying power, with spores that have covered every square millimeter of the earth pretty much for the entire history of life on earth. You're breathing some in right now.
Animals evolved warm-bloodedness partly to improve resistance to environmental fungi. Meanwhile, insects (bees, ants, others) actually farm fungi as part of their food and for defense. This all points to a really profound and fundamental fact: We have been co-existing with fungi every second of every person's entire lives.
If fungi are killing more people, it's because people have changed, not the fungi.
Readit News
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9EJuAU2Un4
Boycotting Indian manufactured medication is probably neither feasible nor a solution. Nuances of regulation matter.
I remember a horror story about how patients would say their psych meds didn't work. Because the patients were, you know, mentally ill, nobody took it seriously. It turned out the FDA had approved the drug based on testing only some of the dosages, and the one that was problematic was not dissolving like it was supposed to.
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even the AIMS protocol doesn't recommend against drugs and techniques that the rest of the world has rejected almost a year ago. My partner treats covid in the US and has been doing consults to patients in India. Most of their work is telling patients to ignore the pills their doctors or government has been sending, although they rarely listen.
I wouldn't be surprised if a large chunk of the covid negative or mild covid population is on steroids.
I do not think that the problem is steroid usage by itself but depressing lack of even basic hygiene even in hospitals.
PS. Blood thinning is standard procedure in COVID-19 care for many hospitals, dunno how reasonable at home without any tests. Remdesivir is injected, I do not believe that it is distributed. Perhaps you meant ivermectin?
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2021/may/11/what-is-the-d...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mucormycosis
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Mark Twain
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You don't get credit for predicting 10 of the last 1 pandemics.
> Not all of our vulnerability is the fault of medicine preserving life so successfully. Other human actions have opened more doors between the fungal world and our own. We clear land for crops and settlement and perturb what were stable balances between fungi and their hosts. We carry goods and animals across the world, and fungi hitchhike on them. We drench crops in fungicides and enhance the resistance of organisms residing nearby. We take actions that warm the climate, and fungi adapt, narrowing the gap between their preferred temperature and ours that protected us for so long.
Still early stages, but signs point to fungi becoming deadlier.
Animals evolved warm-bloodedness partly to improve resistance to environmental fungi. Meanwhile, insects (bees, ants, others) actually farm fungi as part of their food and for defense. This all points to a really profound and fundamental fact: We have been co-existing with fungi every second of every person's entire lives.
If fungi are killing more people, it's because people have changed, not the fungi.
Where commenters of course insist that fungi can't develop resistance to anti-fungals, and fungal infections aren't dangerous in the first place.