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High health hazard Aggressive super-germs released from pharmaceutical plants
Almost all major pharmaceutical companies have their drugs also produced in India. Media research has now shown that large quantities of antibiotics can be found in the environment around these production sites. This can create dangerous, resistant pathogens that spread worldwide.
Complicit in the pharmaceutical industry
The increase in antibiotic resistance is posing a growing challenge for healthcare. Only last year, an EU Commission warned of massively increasing antibiotic resistance. If the problem is not brought under control soon, according to researchers threatens a horror scenario. According to an earlier study by the Berlin Charité, there could be around 10 million deaths from multidrug-resistant germs by 2050. According to recent media reports, the pharmaceutical industry seems to be contributing to spreading dangerous pathogens worldwide.
Recent research shows that large pharmaceutical companies in India could contribute to the emergence of multi-drug resistant bacteria by lack of wastewater treatment. The dangerous germs can spread worldwide. (Image: royaltystockphoto / fotolia.com) Fight against antibiotic resistance
In recent years, more and more governments and experts have announced their intention to step up the fight against antibiotic resistance.
Federal Health Minister Hermann Gröhe said: "It can not leave anyone cold that more and more people worldwide are dying of germs that are resistant to antibiotics. We have to fight antibiotic resistance resolutely - nationally and internationally. "
But what to do if just companies that are to help solve the problem contribute to this significantly?
Globalization of the pathogens
Research by NDR, WDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung has shown that large antibiotics factories in India could contribute to the development of multidrug-resistant bacteria through a lack of wastewater treatment.
As reported by the dpa news agency, water samples collected in November 2016 in the immediate vicinity of pharmaceutical factories in Hyderabad yielded a concentration of antibiotics and fungicides that was sometimes hundreds or even thousands of times higher than previously suggested in German limits.
Arne Rodloff, a microbiologist at Leipzig University Hospital, explained that bacteria in water quickly developed defense mechanisms against antibiotics.
And the Leipzig infection researcher Christoph Lübbert added that the resistant pathogens could get into the human body through direct contact with this water or through the food chain, for example, into the intestine.
According to the experts, this could mean that common antibiotics are no longer effective in infections and patients can even die in the worst case.
Lübbert spoke of a "bioreactor under the open sky" in connection with the sewer he saw in Hyderabad near the factories and said, "This is a globalization of the pathogens."
Tourists contribute to the spread of the dangerous pathogens
Tourism also contributes to the worldwide spread of multidrug-resistant pathogens.
"A large proportion of travelers visiting a low-standard country bring multi-drug intestinal germs home," the CRM Center for Travel Medicine reported last year.
Even from India many travelers return with such bacteria.
European inspectors must not take into account environmental aspects
However, it is also problematic that, for example in Europe, there are no corresponding regulations in connection with the production of medicines.
For example, drugs would be tested for quality before being imported into the EU, but environmental aspects in the producing countries should not be taken into account by inspectors.
As Rolf Hömke, spokesman for the Association of Research-based Pharmaceutical Companies, stated on request of the German Press Agency, the charge of environmental pollution caused by the production of medicines in emerging countries has already been repeatedly raised.
According to the information provided by the companies of the association last September, measures for the traceability of production were agreed but not fully supported by all German pharmaceutical companies.
Federal Health Minister Hermann Gröhe also believes that better industrial and environmental standards are needed. "The fact that companies must not contaminate the water with hazardous substances, must generally apply," said the Minister.
"It's imperative that pharmaceutical companies prepare their wastewater appropriately, anywhere, even in emerging markets."
Reduce antibiotic use
The authors of the television documentary "The invisible enemy - lethal super exciters from pharmaceutical factories", which airs on Monday (22.45 clock) in the ARD, see the reasons for the production conditions abroad also in the price battle in the pharmaceutical market.
Today, 80 to 90 percent of production takes place in countries such as India or China, so that antibiotics can be offered as cheaply as possible.
In India, the concerns of the researchers met with criticism according to dpa. "It is nonsense to correlate industrial wastewater with the transfer of resistant bacteria to humans. Things are much more complicated, "said Chandra Bhushan, deputy director of the Think Tank Center for Science and Environment (CSE) in New Delhi.
The phenomenon of resistant germs exist worldwide. "The US is the largest consumer of antibiotics. There are residues of antibiotics in every chicken meat product. "
According to experts, probably the most important point in the fight against antibiotic resistance is to reduce the mass use of such drugs. Because the excessive use of antibiotics in humans and in animal feed and improper ingestion of drugs promotes resistance. (Ad)