September 15, 2010
China's Ministry of Health has established a monitoring network nationwide for NDM-1 (New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase), which is code for an enzyme that makes bacteria resistant to antibiotics, and selected 19 hospitals in major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai as sentinel hospitals in order to cope with potential threats, reporters learned on Sept. 14.
It's said that entrusted by the health ministry, the Institute of Clinical Pharmacology under Peking University formulated a monitoring plan targeting the super bacteria NDM-1 at the end of August that includes identification, verification and quarantine measures. The plan is currently pending the review and approval of the health ministry and will be publicized in the near future.
"The departments have responded rapidly by conducting proactive monitoring rather than passive defenses," said Li Geng, director of the Antibiotics Office in the Institute of Clinical Pharmacology under Peking University.
To better monitor and identify NDM-1, the health ministry designated 19 hospitals in Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Liaoning and Jiangsu as sentinel hospitals. These hospitals must be equipped with necessary equipment and professional personnel in order to monitor and check patients with low immunity and critical illness, emergency patients as well as those from the South Asian subcontinent.
The Peking Union Medical College Hospital and the Peking University First Hospital in Beijing are among the sentinel hospitals. The Beijing Municipal Health Bureau said that the city's own bacterial resistant monitoring network to be established by the end of 2010 will focus on monitoring the superbug NDM-1 .
The monitoring plan requires that if any medical institution across the country finds positive drug-resistant Enterobacteria that has similar drug resistance features to NDM-1 during examinations, and does not have laboratory testing conditions, they must immediately send the bacterial strains to the nearest sentinel hospital. Furthermore, they should also report related information to the national drug-resistant bacteria monitoring network within 12 hours in order to get final confirmation by the Institute of Clinical Pharmacology under Peking University.
One day needed to identify super bacteria
The public can rest assured that China has techniques to easily detect and identify super bacteria. Li said that qualified hospitals will conduct both enzyme production experiments and genetic testing after receiving suspected bacterial strains.
"As the enzyme produced needs an overnight culture, an enzyme production experiment takes one day. Therefore, although the genetic testing only takes half a day, it will still take at least one day to identify super bacteria."
Once suspected bacteria are detected, the bacteria carrier should be immediately quarantined when researchers try to identify the bacteria in order to prevent the further spread.
Almost 100 percent accurate artificial gene
Health Ministry spokesman Deng Haihua said on Sept. 10 that China has not found any cases of the super bacteria so far, but a multi-layered defense system has been basically established.
A person in charge of the super-bacteria-related tasks at the Institute of Clinical Pharmacology of Peking University First Hospital said that based on the publicly available gene sequence of the super bacteria in question, China’s health authorities have synthesized a gene, which is almost 100 percent the same as the bacteria’s real gene, so as to examine whether a suspected strain of bacteria is genuine super bacteria or not. Therefore, super bacteria can be identified in time by using the synthesized gene before the standard gene is introduced to China.
Meanwhile, in order to solve the predicament that no drugs can kill the super bacteria, Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Holdings Limited and other scientific research institutions have already launched an anti-super bacteria drug R&D project, striving to achieve substantive results within five years.
By People's Daily Online
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