A little under a year ago, a man was brought into a hospital in New York for abdominal surgery. A blood test, however, revealed that he had a newly discovered and very deadly germ residing in his body.
This germ, Candida auris, is now being deemed an “urgent threat” by governments worldwide.
C. auris is a fungus that attacks people with weakened immune systems. Over the past few years, it has become more and more of a problem. It has terrorized hospitals, shut down an ICU in Britain, and has spread all across the globe.
The scary thing, however, is that it has an almost 50% fatality rate in under 90 days.
The man in the New York hospital eventually died due to complications from C. auris. However, the germ persisted. It persisted so well, in fact, that the hospital had to tear down parts of the ceiling and floor to remove it.
Not only that, but they had to obtain specialized cleaning equipment as well. “The mattress, the bed rails, the canister holes, the window shades, the ceiling, everything in the room was positive [for C. auris],” said the hospital’s president, Scott Lorin.
For many years, experts have warned about the overuse of antibiotics, and how it is reducing their effectiveness. However, fungi have also secretly been benefitting from our over usage of antifungals. This discovery adds an entirely new facet to the already dire situation at hand.
The rampant prescription of antimicrobials for minor things has made the world significantly more dangerous for those prone to infection. Not only that, but using anti-fungals on crops is making them more resistant as well.
Scientists say that in as little as 3 decades, “superbugs” could be a bigger threat to the world than cancer. The projected deaths from resistant infections in 2050 is 10 million people.
2 million people already deal with resistant infections yearly just in the US and 23,000 of those die from them.
