The reliance on antibiotics has increased over the years, causing something called a “superbug” to emerge. A superbug is a type of virus that is immune to all forms of antibiotics and medications. Because a person is unable to get rid of the virus, it can lead to death. A case like this has happened recently when a woman from Nevada returned from India and got severely sick. She died after the hospital took samples from her blood; they realized that Klebsiella pneumoniae, a disease normally found in the gut, was the reason she died. They analyzed the bug and found that it was immune to 26 antibiotics available in the U.S. Cases like this could be the start of something extremely dangerous because people could end up dying from what used to be non-lethal diseases.

After this case, scientists started to work much harder to find a new way to fight back against Clostridium difficile, another identified superbug, which also starts in the gut. A new drug called Zinplava was developed to fight back against the rise of C. difficile. During testing they found that it cut the risk getting the virus by 40%. The drug has side effects though, which include fever, nausea, and diarrhea. It only effects five to seven percent of the patients.

They recently found Malaria superbugs in Southeast Asia which threatens public health world wide. The parasite, which comes from mosquitoes, has shown up around parts of Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. They could move their way into India and then to Africa. If people around the world don’t work to fight against superbugs like Malaria and C. difficile, more might pop up and cause an epidemic.