By: D.K Choudhary
Indian Superbug Resistant to all Available Antibiotics: Study
i. According to a research work published in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), a multidrug-resistant organism has been indentified known as carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) which is resistant to all available antibiotics.
ii. Commonly identified as Klebsiella pneumonia, the organism leads to high rate of death as thus has been labeled as “night mare” bacteria.
iii. The work was based on a case where-in a 70 year old American lady was infected by a superbug biting on her tour to India and eventually died due to the resistant capacity of the organism.
iv. The US physicians used 14 antibiotics to treat the woman but the infection was so serious that none of them worked.
v. The wound specimen was further sent for testing at US Centres for Disease Control (CDC). The test found presence of enzyme named New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase (NDM-1) that has the capability to breakdown antibiotics (carbapenems) used to treat multidrug resistant infections.
vi .These enzymes were resistant to 26 different antibiotics available to treat drug-resistant organisms.
vii. NDM-1 was first discovered when a Swedish patient was infected in 2009 in India.
Social Networking Giant Facebook to Rollout Fake News Tools for Germany
i. World’s largest social networking platform, Facebook on January 15, 2017 announced to introduce Fake News Tools for Germany Facebook to help the residents in combating the Fbspread of unrealistic news stories.
ii. Under the fake news tool would pass the story that is believed to be false for testing. It will be send to a German non-profit body of investigative journalists, “Correctiv” to check the fact.
iii. If they find the story to be false, it will be marked on Facebook as “disputed” and will appear lower in users’ news feeds.
iv. It would enable the users in Germany to select “It’s a fake news story” as an option while reporting another user’s post. They can then mark the post as fake news, let the other user know they think it is fake, or block that user.
v. Earlier in December 2016, Facebook roll-out a similar tool for US.
