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This article is about India’s growing antibiotic resistance crisis — how everyday misuse of antibiotics, from stopping courses early to over-the-counter consumption, is accelerating the risk of drug-resistant infections. Drawing on a recent global study published in The Lancet eClinical Medicine, it highlights alarming findings that show India has one of the highest rates of multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs) in the world, alongside the role of antibiotics in food systems and agriculture.
Most of us have taken antibiotics for things like a stubborn fever, a sore throat, a cough that wouldn’t go away. We start the strip, feel better in a day or two, and stop (something I am guilty of myself). Sometimes we save the rest for later and often, we buy them straight from the chemist without seeing a doctor which doesn't feel like a big deal. But these habits, according to a recent study, change how infections respond to medicine and can have serious implications.
Antibiotics work by killing bacteria or stopping them from multiplying. When taken properly, for the full prescribed course, they can clear an infection completely. The trouble begins when antibiotics are used when they aren’t needed, or stopped the moment symptoms ease. The weakest bacteria die, but the stronger ones survive. Those survivors adapt to the drug, multiply, and pass that resistance on. Over time, the same antibiotic stops working altogether.
A new global study published in The Lancet eClinical Medicine has confirmed what doctors have been warning about for years about the same: India is facing an antibiotic resistance emergency. The research shows that 83% of Indian patients tested were carrying multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs) — bacteria that are no longer killed by several antibiotics commonly used to treat infections. That rate is the highest among the four countries included, far above Italy, the United States, or the Netherlands.
MDROs — often called 'superbugs' — don’t cause more severe disease by their nature, but they are far harder to treat because the usual antibiotics don’t work. In the Indian patients examined in the study, more than 70% harboured bacteria that produce enzymes rendering common antibiotics ineffective, and about 23% carried bacteria resistant even to 'carbapenems' — antibiotics of last resort.
Another factor the study draws attention to is how deeply antibiotics are embedded in India’s food system. Antibiotics are widely used in poultry, dairy, aquaculture, and shrimp farming to prevent disease and speed up growth. As a result, people are exposed to antibiotics through food and the environment even when they are not taking any medication themselves. This constant, low-level exposure adds to the overall resistance burden and makes it easier for drug-resistant bacteria to persist and spread.
Doctors involved in the research warn that this seriously changes how people get sick and get treated. When a person with a resistant infection is admitted to hospital, first-line antibiotics fail. Recovery takes longer, costs more, and sometimes requires ICU care. In one comparison from the study, a patient without resistant bacteria recovered in about three days with standard antibiotics, while a similar patient with resistant bacteria stayed more than two weeks and needed much more powerful drugs. Dr. D. Nageshwar Reddy, Chairman of AIG Hospitals, has been raising awareness about this problem in India. Referring to findings from AIG’s own research on patients undergoing procedures like ERCP, he has pointed out how common multidrug-resistant bacteria have already become, even before treatment begins.
For most of human history, a simple infection could kill you. People died from cuts, fevers, childbirth, and illnesses that today feel so easily avoidable. The discovery of antibiotics changed that completely — it made modern medicine possible and turned once-fatal infections into treatable ones. Somewhere along the way, that scale of importance got lost. And we went so far the other end of the spectrum that it became a quick over-the-counter fix for us. But it is still the same crucial life-saving drug that revolutionised the way we approach medicine, and remembering that may be the only way to stop us from losing its effectiveness all over again.
