The UK must prepare for the arrival of superbugs that have already emerged from the battlefield in Ukraine, an MP has warned.
Liberal Democrat Danny Chambers said the antimicrobial resistant bacteria has already appeared in Polish and German hospitals, and it is only a matter of time before it comes to Britain.
He told Metro: ‘This isn’t an academic concern.
‘We know that antimicrobial resistance is a huge problem in wounds in Ukraine, specifically in soldiers because they’re more likely to get wounded. We know that people from Ukraine are getting injuries treated in Europe. It’s that simple. We’re going to see it elsewhere.’
Since Russia’s invasion three years ago, Ukraine has become a breeding ground for lethal bugs that defy treatment.
In times of war, the use of antibiotics by doctors increases as hospitals struggle to cope with the number of people sick or injured. The more antibiotics are used, the more likely it is that resistant infections will appear.
One such type of bacteria is Klebsiella pneumoniae, named after the military physician and pioneering bacteriologist Edwin Klebs.
Earlier this month, Harvard Public Health published a report about a 50-year-old Ukrainian soldier who was taken to Germany for treatment after his vehicle was blown up.
The clinicians who looked after him found, among six forms of drug-resistant bacteria, a strain of Klebsiella pneumoniae ‘resistant to every antibiotic that researchers had tested against it’.
Such infections are becoming ‘a significant factor that is affecting Ukraine’s defence capabilities’, Chambers said, as injured troops are taking longer to recover or not recovering at all – and using up valuable resources in the meantime.
For the rest of Europe, the bacteria pose a different but no less serious problem.
The MP, who worked as a veterinarian before entering Parliament, said: ‘Once you get someone coming here with one of these superbugs from Ukraine, you don’t know where it’s going to spread. It’s normally a hospital.
‘People pick these sort of things up because they go there for treatment. There’s other people vulnerable, other people more likely to get infected. If you get really bad things in UK hospitals, it’s a real problem.’
Chambers raised the issue at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, telling Sir Keir Starmer: ‘Just like Mr Putin, we know that these superbugs do not respect national borders, and it is only a matter of time until we start to detect them in our NHS hospitals.’
He suggested the UK should send rapid diagnostic tests to Ukraine, which would identify the bacteria quicker so alarm bells could start sounding earlier.
‘We know this is a problem. We know it will be a problem,’ the Lib Dem said later.
‘We can cope with it if we do proper surveillance, if we have all the data, we are prepared, we can deal with it like we do with other antimicrobial resistant infections.
‘And that’s what I was trying to do [at PMQs], was highlight it up the political agenda to make sure that in – I don’t know if it’s six months, a year, and it suddenly turns out half the hospitals in the UK have an infection and we didn’t know where it came from.
‘We’ll be like, well, hang on, we could be preparing for this.’
In his response last Wednesday, Sir Keir said the government’s support for Ukraine is ‘iron clad’, adding: ‘We are funding NHS doctors and nurses to work closely with their Ukrainian counterparts to share best practice, including how to prevent the spread of infections and AMR.’
UK Health Security Agency deputy director Dr Colin Brown said antimicrobial resistance is ‘not a crisis of the future, but one that is with us right now causing over a million deaths globally each year’.
He added: ‘At UKHSA we’re making it a priority to work with partners globally to ensure the efficacy of antimicrobials now and for future generations using our expertise and capabilities.’
Dr Brown said the agency used ‘cutting-edge surveillance and modelling’ as well as wider research to stay on top of the threat, by making existing antimicrobials work better and stopping infections happening in the first place.
He also urged Brits to help slow the emergence of new drug-resistant bugs by only taking antibiotics if told to do so by a healthcare professional.
‘Do not save some for later or share them with friends and family,’ he said.
‘Treat antibiotics with respect and they will be there to help us all in the future.’
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2025-01-21T12:17:56Z