In attacking the credibility of the recent report in the reputed medical journal The Lancet,the Health Ministry appears to have overlooked the fact that Indian government agencies have been working with Wellcome Trust,one of the funders of the study,for many years. The government and MPs have denounced as alarmist and irrational the finding of a new drug-resistant superbug named New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase-1 or NDM-1 among foreigners recently returned after surgery in India,and suggested that the study could be a conspiracy to hurt Indian medical tourism. However,the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) has been collaborating with the Wellcome Trust for the last two years in a fellowship programme to bring scientists of Indian origin back to India from overseas. The DBT also proposes to soon sign an MoU with the Trust to help small- and medium-sized companies produce low-cost health technology for India. This was announced in the Indo-UK joint statement during the visit of British Prime Minister David Cameron to India last month. They have outstanding standards. They are very India-centric and have helped India build its own biomedical science. We value their partnership and they do everything in partnership with the government, Dr M K Bhan,Secretary,DBT,said. The Lancet article includes full disclosures on potential conflicts of interest. It says: Kartikeyan K Kumarasamy has received a travel grant from Wyeth. David M Livermore has received conference support from numerous pharmaceutical companies,and also holds shares in AstraZeneca,Merck,Pfizer,Dechra,and GlaxoSmithKline,and,as Enduring Attorney,manages further holdings in GlaxoSmithKline and Eco Animal Health. All other authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest. Prof Timothy R Walsh of Cardiff University,the lead author of the study,said: The antibiotic most consistently active against these bacteria,colistin,is long out of patent and unlikely to be profitable. All work on the UK patients was internally funded as part of our national responsibility to investigate resistance & infectious disease issues. Other support for the study was variously from the EU,Wellcome Trust which is a biomedical research charity and not a pharmaceutical company and Wyeth. The funding from Wyeth was an educational fellowship for flights and accommodation only. Wyeth did not wish to see the data prior to publication and have not received the isolates in the paper for their purposes. For all the governments public scepticism,however,the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) has ordered a safety review in all central hospitals in the wake of the NDM-1 alert,and asked the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to look into the findings of the study. The contribution of this study is that we review our hospital infection control policy. We will be more focused. The ICMR has been told to get into the details of the study, said Dr R K Srivastava,Director-General of Health Services. Dr V M Katoch,D-G,ICMR,said: People have to remain alert. Occasional infections will be there but if hospital practices are good,they can be taken care of. Even as it is not a public health problem,this is an opportunity for us to get focused.
