Got a horrifying foreign superbug? You may have more than one

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The sad tale of a US resident who fell ill while traveling abroad has prompted an ominous warning from health experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-that is, that the most horrifying, highly drug-resistant infections known to health experts tend to travel in packs.

The patient who prompted the warning was traveling in Kenya in the late summer of 2018 when a cerebral hemorrhage struck. The brain bleed landed the traveler in a hospital there for a month, during which time doctors performed a variety of procedures. Those included placing a feeding tube and inserting a breathing tube into the neck. The patient encountered several complications during the treatments, including sepsis, pneumonia, and a urinary tract infection, requiring courses of potent antibiotic and anti-fungal medications.

In September, the severely ill patient was medically evacuated to an acute-care hospital in Maryland. There, doctors found that the patient had become infected with several of the most dreaded multi-drug-resistant bacteria. These include oxacillinase-48-like-producing carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae and the New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase-producing carbapenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Both germs are notoriously difficult to treat and can be deadly.

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