A Tonight with Trevor McDonald investigation is to reveal that a new antibiotic-resistant superbug is now causing infections in an estimated 30,000 people in England and Wales a year. A Tonight source, a senior scientist, says that the superbug, mutant cousin to the E.coli bacteria that naturally resides in our guts, is fatal in 10% of cases suggesting that it could be killing up to 3,000 men, women and children. This 10% death rate is also backed by a research paper that was presented at a major conference in Chicago last week. MRSA deaths number 2500 people a year. CJD, the human form of BSE, has claimed 161 lives. Scientists have found this new superbug ESBL E.coli in something millions of Britons eat every day - chicken. As there is no comprehensive national strategy, individual doctors have been developing their own methods of detecting and treating ESBL ecoli infections. The Health Protection Agency (HPA) published a report two years ago about ESBL E.coli and made a series of recommendations, one of which was keeping GPs informed about the lethal bug. Tonight surveyed 50 GPs and 70% of them had never heard of it. The superbug usually manifests itself as a urinary tract or blood infection. It is difficult to detect and there is only one class of antibiotics available to treat it reliably, which must be given intravenously into the blood stream. The bug can attack the organs and become lethal. And some doctors are concerned that it could become resistant to that last class of antibiotics. The first known outbreak of ESBL E.coli infections appeared in the UK in 2003 and mainly affected elderly women. But as Tonight reporter Jonathan Maitland discovers, the superbug is now marching across Britain and affecting all age group.
—ITV