Drug-resistant

Drug-resistant infections are spreading quickly.

At least 700,000 people die every year due to drug-resistant diseases, including 230,000 from multidrug resistant tuberculosis, according to the World Health Organization.

They report that 6 percent of new cases and 35 percent of retreatment cases are drug-resistant to more than one medication.

In a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, investigators describe how the change made vancomycin 1,000 times more effective against both drug-resistant enterococci and the original forms of the microorganism.

Unhindered, the drug-resistant bacteria can find their way into the bloodstream or organs through wounds or the use of catheters. Once infected, patients, whose bodies are now overrun by superbugs, do not respond to antibiotics and can die of septic shock and organ failure.

These four nations accounted for more than 230,000 new cases of difficult-to-treat tuberculosis in 2015 — nearly 40 percent of drug-resistant cases worldwide, according to the CDC investigators.

Researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, say extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis has spread from person-to-person in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province, contributing to a tenfold increase in the number of cases in the country since 2002.

Drug-resistant superbugs, which can live on flat surfaces, are the most serious worry. Often-lethal microbes like MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, do not respond to standard antibiotics, making it very hard to treat patients who become infected with them.

Fifteen to 20 percent of hospital rooms were cleaned using the UV robots. Anderson said the devices were used in rooms where it was suspected that superbugs lurked. These rooms included intensive care units and rooms where patients had been treated for drug-resistant bacterial infections.