If antibiotic-resistant bacteria spread, they will cause an increasing number of infant mortalities.

In an age of mass tourism, it doesn’t take much to spread disease.

A SWEDISH medical expert is convinced that difficult-to-treat infections are on the increase, as bacteria resistant to many antibiotics spread and become more common as a result of mass international tourism. For example, treatment of traveller’s diarrhoea (”Delhi Belly”) can take up to four weeks.

No new, effective medicine capable of combating antibiotic-resistant bacteria is due on the market any time soon. Generally, the best way to prevent infection is to diligently wash one’s hands and to eat clean food.

Professor Gunnar Kahlmeter stresses that use of antibiotics should be a well-informed and well-considered choice. Thanks to prescriptions of loosely defined, long-term courses of antibiotics, many bacteria have already grown resistant.

Kahlmeter predicts that as antibiotic-resistant bacteria spread, they will cause an increasing number of infant and geriatric mortalities. Many people carry bacteria without any symptoms.

In one Swedish study, one in four healthy volunteers came back from a trip to Asia carrying in their intestines ESBL bacteria resistant to many antibiotics. The infected had in common that they had all come down with traveller’s diarrhoea while abroad. Traveller’s diarrhoea typically strikes when food is not stored or prepared hygienically.

The common man only notices ESBL bacteria later, if and when he falls ill with a stubborn case of urethritis. According to laboratory director Jari Jalava, urethritic inflammations in Southwest Finland have increased tenfold within the space of four years.

Experts gathered at a conference in Helsinki on 24 August to consider the links between infections and travel.

Super bacteria lurk in hospitals

Powerful strains of bacteria or so-called superbugs are resistant to almost all antibiotics. Jalava says that in Greece, Italy, the eastern parts of the United States, Israel and India, the risk of infection is considerable for anyone treated in a hospital. Superbugs include bacteria carrying the KPC or NDM-1 genes, for example.

But infection specialist Marja Rummukainen points out that even in these countries, there’s no sense in avoiding hospitals for fear of bacteria, should you fall ill while travelling.

If a patient from one of these countries is brought to Finland, he is quarantined for as long as it takes to examine him and ensure that he is not carrying any of these bacteria. The experts assure that the situation in Finland remains under control.

PÄIVI SEPPÄLÄ – STT
MATTHEW PARRY – HT
LEHTIKUVA - JORGE DIRKX