LONDON: India is the world’s antibiotic popping capital, recording the highest number of such pills consumed annually — 13 billion pills as against 10 billion in China and 7 billion in the US.As a result of such reckless use, deadly strains of life-taking bacteria that are resistant to even the latest generation of antibiotics have been found to be rampant in India.The first State of the World’s Antibiotics report 2015, to be revealed by Washington-based Centre for Disease Dynamics , Economics and Policy (CDDEP) has found that the bacteria strain Klebsiella pneumoniae’s resistance to last-resort antibiotic class, Carbapenems, was a whopping 57% in India in 2014, up from 29% earlier.This is a dangerous superbug found in hospitals whose resistance rate in Europe is below 5%.Klebsiella’s resistance to a variety of drugs is high — the bug is around 80% resistance to the class III generation Cephalosporins, 73% resistant to fluoroquinolones and 63% to aminoglycosides. For four of five drug classes tested, Klebsiella was more than 60% resistant in India.The report confirms the findings of a Princeton University study in 2014 which said Indians consume the highest number of antibiotics in the world.With antibiotic use increasing by 43% in India from 2000 to 2010, resistance to the deadly E Coli, which causes serious food poisoning, abdominal cramps and severe diarrhoea, too has been growing in India.For three different drug classes, E Coli resistance in India was currently over 80%. It is one of the pathogens for which across the world, resistance is becoming a huge concern.In Europe, north America, southeast Asia and Africa, resistance to amino penicillins — a broad-spectrum antibiotic class that treats a variety of infections hovers around 50%.In India, 13% of E coli were resistant to the latest generation of antibiotics, Carbapenems, in 2013.In further bad news, in India, a steep increase in MRSA, a contagious and antibiotic-resistant bacteria, was recorded by a large private laboratory network, from 29% of Staphylococcus aureus isolates in 2009 to 47% in 2014. Staphylococcus aureus is one of the five most common causes of infections after injury or surgery.The report which reveals global trends in drug resistance in 39 countries and antibiotic use in 69 countries says India has the highest amount of overall antibiotic consumption of all the countries. As many as 58,000 neonatal sepsis deaths are attributable to drug-resistant infections in India alone.Ramanan Laxminarayan, CDDEP Director and report co-author said, “A rampant rise in antibiotic use poses a major threat to public health, especially when there’s no oversight on appropriate prescribing. Antibiotic use drives antibiotic resistance”.“Carbapenem antibiotics are for use in the most dire circumstances — when someone’s life is in danger and no other drug will cure the infection,” said Sumanth Gandra, an infectious diseases physician and CDDEP resident scholar. “We’re seeing unprecedented resistance to these precious antibiotics globally, and especially in India. If these trends continue, infections that could once be treated in a week or two could become routinely life threatening and endanger millions of lives.”Since their introduction into medicine in the 1940s, antibiotics have been used from treating serious infections to preventing infections in surgical patients, protecting cancer patients and people with compromised immune systems.Now, however, once-treatable infections are becoming difficult to cure, raising costs to healthcare facilities, and patient mortality is rising.Antibiotic resistance is a direct result of antibiotic use. The greater the volume of antibiotics used, the greater the chances that antibiotic-resistant populations of bacteria will prevail.The report says, “Rising incomes are increasing access to antibiotics. That is saving lives but also increasing use — both appropriate and inappropriate—which in turn is driving resistance”.Experts say the Indian Council of Medical Research had begun setting up the Anti-Microbial Resistance Surveillance Network in 2011. When complete, its seven nodes will focus on diarrhea, enteric fever, sepsis, gram-positive bacteria, fungal infections and respiratory pathogens.