Hospital-acquired infections are fuelling antimicrobial resistance
SHOBHA SHUKLA - CNS
When we go to seek healthcare in hospitals or other healthcare settings, getting infected with hospital-acquired infections instead, is not part of the deal. "Why are hospital-acquired infections so acceptable?" rightly questions Dr Nour Shamas, a Lebanese infectious disease clinical pharmacist, who is also part of the World Health Organization (WHO) Task Force of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Survivors.
The issue of AMR got personal for her when her mother developed a hospital-acquired urinary tract infection caused by a drug-resistant microbe in 2018 - and continues to battle antimicrobial resistance even today. Even before this happened, Dr Nour Shamas has led antimicrobial stewardship programmes and knows how to dispense drugs to treat infections, keeping in mind the threat of AMR.
Her mother had gone to the hospital for a spinal column surgery in 2018 - not to get infected with hospital-acquired infection in return. Getting a drug-resistant infection while in hospital was the beginning of a series of hospitalisations and treatment failures that were complicated by the fragile healthcare system in Lebanon- a country beset with economic challenges, and conflict. Nour felt helpless about her mothers' situation. This feeling of helplessness inspired her to champion the cause of AMR in the Middle East and now globally.
"I am a carer of an AMR Survivor (my mother)"
"I am from Lebanon where the economic situation is generally tough. In addition to that, healthcare infrastructure is severely compromised. In 2018 when I was in the USA at an infectious disease conference, I got a call that my mother had to undergo an emergency spine surgery. It was scary. We had to spend a lot of money as healthcare is out of pocket back home. A couple of months later, she started complaining of back pain. For a very long time it was thought to be back or age-related. But her back pain actually turned out to be a urinary tract infection that had affected her kidneys," said Nour.
Things became even more serious when Nour and family learnt that her mother had sepsis as a drug-resistant strain of bacteria had gotten into her blood stream. "This could be just any other story, because all of us are at risk of going through antimicrobial resistance (AMR). But it is also important to understand that it was the failure of the healthcare system which impacted our ability to take care of my mother because we could have afforded it if the standard service was available," said Nour.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
