Is India’s Rise Creating a Global Health Crisis?

The Country's Hospitals, Rivers, and Even Chickens Are Becoming a Source of Antibiotic Resistance

A 59-year-old man from India, who was living in Sweden, visited New Delhi in late 2007, where he was hospitalized for an infection and treated with an array of antibiotics. Once he was back in Sweden, in early 2008, he was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection that could not be cured with the antibiotics that are considered a last resort against resistant infections. When scientists examined the bacteria in his infection they found a new antibiotic resistance gene, which was named “New Delhi Metallo-beta-lactamase-1”–or NDM-1.

NDM-1 is serious: In …