Hyderabad pharma industry dumping antibiotic waste in water, unwittingly creating super bug, claims Vice Video report

February 27, 2016, NewsCrunch

A Vice video report has drawn global attention to the waste management practice of the pharmaceutical companies in Hyderabad, which may be creating a superbug resistant to antibiotics.

The pharmaceutical industry in Hyderabad has put Indiaon the world drugs map by emerging as a key exporter of generic drugs. Ironically, the same industry may have become the breeding ground of superbug and threatening local and global health.

The Vice report shows that villagers along the Musi river near Hyderabad complain of sickness, which baffle doctors as there seems to be no drug to treat them.

These villages could be victims of the waste allegedly dumped into the water by Pharma companies, which may be containing high doses of antibiotics.

Prof Joakim Larsson of Sweden’s University of Gothenburg, who has studied the issue, explains what he has found out:

There is more antibiotics in the water here than in the blood of patients

That is making the bacteria here acquire newer forms of resistance

They in turn may transfer resistance to human pathogens

In effect, creating and disseminating a super bug

The report filed by Vice journalist Neha Shastry has been viewed over 100,000 times in the last five days.