When drugmaker AstraZeneca closed down its research and development centre in Bangalore six years ago, some of the local scientists managed to find new jobs at a nearby biotech start-up. Since then, they have been working to tackle a problem which is causing concern among doctors in India and around the world: the human body’s increasing resistance to antibiotics.
For Anand Anandkumar, the chief executive of Bugworks, the burden is personal. His father, a leading infectious disease doctor, died after a cardiac intervention led to a Klebsiella pneumoniae bacterial infection that drugs could not treat. His co-founder lost a baby in hospital to a fatal form of E. coli.
“This is a silent tsunami,” he says. “We have the biggest superbug problem. In three to five years, many Indian hospitals will delay surgery unless it’s absolutely life threatening. If this isn’t a pandemic, what is it?”