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Experts flew to Delhi this week for a workshop to discuss developing rapid diagnostics for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and ways to overcome this resistance.

Dr Marjorie Bardiau, Marie Curie Researcher with the university’s Environment & Public Health Research Group, is joining experts from University College London, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Dundee, and from India institutions including the All India Institute of Medical Sciences.

The workshop is being run by the UK Science and Innovation Network and among those attending will be representatives from funding agencies from both countries as well as industry.

Dr Bardiau will be speaking on effluents from wastewater treatment plants, which are suspected to be a significant source of antibiotic residues, antibiotic-resistant bacteria and antibiotic resistance genes (ARG) in the environment.

She said: “The battle against superbugs and bacterial infection is more and more difficult as the resistance to antibiotics is increasing rapidly for many infections. Moreover, new antibiotics are very difficult to find and resistance to them often appears very quickly.

“More and more research teams are trying to find an alternative to antibiotics. One of the objectives of the workshop is to discuss the different opportunities to fund research collaborations between India and UK.

“Our work is highly relevant to the Indian setting as many pharmaceutical companies (releasing kilos of antibiotics in their wastewater) have operations in India and only a portion of their waste goes to treatment.

“Recent studies have shown that a large portion of the Indian population are carrying multi-resistant bacteria, much of which ends up in wastewater. Developing research in this field could help to understand and explain the current situation in India and to define the role of wastewater in the spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria in the country.”

You can read more about the research on the blog.