Countries brace for ‘silent tsunami’ of antibiotic-resistant infections

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: increasing resistance to antibiotics undermining treatments.

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.