DNA Special: How bacterial infections are causing more deaths in India than COVID-19?

A report by international medical journal Lancet has found that bacterial infection claims the maximum number of lives in the world after heart-related diseases. Today, at DNA India, we will try and decode the DNA of killer bacteria present in our bodies.

According to World Health Organisation, around 1,79,00,000 die every year due to heart-related ailments. It has been found in the Lancet study that in 2019, 77 lakh people died due to bacterial infections across the globe. 

The study also claims that bacterial infections are killing people faster than a disease like coronavirus. India saw its first death due to COVID-19 in March 2020. Since then, nearly 5.30 lakh people have lost their lives due to the disease, which means an average of 552 deaths per day. 

Lancet study claims that in India alone in 2019, more than 13.67 lakh people died due to bacterial infections, which means an average of 3,745 death each day. This is seven times more than the lives claimed by coronavirus in India. 

While COVID-19 continues to subside, bacterial infections have remained ever since and will always be there. Medicines and vaccines are there, but these infections continue to claims crores of lives every year. 

In 2019, out of all the deaths in the world, 13.6 per cent were due to bacterial infections, according to the Lancet study. 

In the report, 33 such bacteria have been identified, due to which 77 lakh deaths occurred in the year 2019. Out of these 77 lakh deaths, only five types of bacteria have been considered responsible for 60 lakh deaths. These five killer bacteria are - E. coli, S. Pneumoniae, K. Pneumoniae, S. Aureus and A. Baumanii.

The first bacteria is E-coli. This bacteria killed 1.57 lakh people in India in 2019. These bacteria usually enter the body through contaminated food and drink. Usually this bacteria causes food poisoning and diarrhea.

The second bacteria is - S. pneumonia, which claimed 1,51,768 lives in India alone in the year 2019. This bacteria enters the body by breathing in polluted air and causes respiratory diseases and pneumonia.

The third bacteria is - K. pneumonia due to which 1.34 lakh people died in the year 2019 in India. This is a type of hospital-acquired bacterial infection which causes pneumonia, blood infection, and wound infection.

The fourth bacteria is - S. aureus. Due to this, 1.30 lakh people died in the year 2019 in India. This bacteria is present inside the nose and on  skin of humans and can also spread by shaking hands with an infected person. If this bacterial infection spreads more, then sepsis occurs, that is, poison starts spreading in the blood.

And the fifth is bacteria - A. bomani, which claimed about 1.04 lakh lives in India in 2019. This bacteria is also hospital-acquired like Pneumonia. These bacteria are actually a group of many bacteria..which are present in soil, water etc. in the environment. This bacteria causes blood, lung and urinary infections.