Over the past few decades people living in many low-and middle-income countries have become wealthier and as a consequence they have begun consuming more meat and dairy products. In several countries in Africa meat consumption has grown by more than half while in Asia and Latin America the growth is over two-thirds.

To meet this growing demand, animal husbandry has become industrialized, with an increased reliance on the use of antimicrobials to treat and prevent infections among animals, as well as to increase their weight and improve profitability.

Excessive and indiscriminate use of antimicrobials in animal husbandry is one of the reasons for the rapid proliferation of bacteria resistant to antimicrobials around the world. Drugs that were once highly potent have begun losing their efficacy in deterring bacteria. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is now posing a serious threat to the health and lives of both animals and humans.

With only limited surveillance capacities, antimicrobial use is typically less regulated and documented in low- and middle-income countries, relative to wealthier industrialized countries. Researchers at ETH Zurich recently published a map of AMR in animals in low- and middle-income countries which showed where, and in which animal species, resistance occurred for the common foodborne bacteria Salmonella, E. coli, Campylobacter and Staphylococcus.

According to this study, the regions associated with high rates of AMR in animals were in northeast China, northeast India, southern Brazil, Iran and Turkey. In these countries, the bacteria listed above are now resistant to a large number of drugs that are used not only in animals but also in human medicine.

The researchers introduced a new index to track the evolution of resistance to multiple drugs —  the proportion of drugs tested in each region with resistance rates higher than 50 percent. Globally, this index has almost tripled for chicken and pigs over the last 20 years. Currently, one third of drugs fail 50 percent of the time in chicken and one quarter of drug fail in 50 percent of the time in pigs.

This alarming trend could affect the sustainability of the animal industry and potentially the health of consumers. Antimicrobial resistance is a global problem. There is little point in making considerable efforts to reduce it on one side of the world if it is increasing dramatically on the other side.

The researchers have now created an open-access web platform resistancebank.org to share their findings and gather additional data on resistance in animals. For example, veterinarians and state-authorities can upload data on resistance in their region to the platform and share it with other people who are interested.

 


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