Guidance Notes and Best Practice Guides
Newswire – HPA: The Health Protection Agency (HPA) welcomes actions to raise the profile of emerging drug resistance and fully supports the focus of World Health Day this year, which looks at the increasing need for the development of new antibiotics to combat this ever-growing trend in drug resistance.
The HPA, alongside scientists at CardiffUniversity, recently co-authored a paper published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases looking specifically at the emergence of NDM-1 and its import to the UK. This is an enzyme that destroys carbapenems; an important group of antibiotics used for difficult infections in hospitals.
The HPA has so far recorded 88 cases of bacteria with NDM-1 in the UK, most of them from patients linked to the Indian subcontinent (as well as 283 isolates with 'KPC' (Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase) another type of carbapenem resistance). NDM-1 is widespread outside the hospital environment in Delhi, circulating in bacteria than inhabit drains and tap water.
The HPA recently developed new guidance in association with the Advisory Committee on Antimicrobial Resistance and Healthcare Associated Infections (ARHAI), to help microbiologists & infection control specialists to recognise, treat & prevent infections caused by bacteria with resistance to carbapenem antibiotics.
