Revealed: How Dirty Production Of NHS Drugs In India Helps Create Superbugs In Britain - TruePublica
The NHS is buying drugs from pharmaceutical companies in
India whose dirty production methods are fuelling the rise of superbugs,
and there are no checks or regulations in place to stop this happening.
The growth in superbugs –
infections which are resistant to antibiotics – is one of the biggest
public health crises facing the world today, and pollution in drug
companies’ supply chains is one of its causes. Yet the Bureau of Investigative Journalism
has established that firms with a history of bad practice and pollution
are supplying the NHS, and environmental standards do not feature in
NHS procurement protocols.
New tests on water samples taken outside pharmaceutical factories in
India which sell to the NHS found they contained bacteria which were
resistant to the antibiotics made inside the plants.
This suggests industrial waste containing active antibiotic
ingredients is being leaked into the surrounding environment. Studies
have shown
how this causes nearby bacteria to develop immunity to the drugs –
creating “superbugs” – and that those resistant bacteria then spread
around the world.
