Antibiotics are indiscriminately used on food crops in several parts of the country, adding to the burden of antibiotic resistance
Dharampal Singh just cannot stop admiring the cauliflowers glistening with beads of dew on his farm near the Yamuna banks in Delhi. Next to the plot, rows of radishes, spinach, fenugreek and bottle gourds lie shining in the morning sun.
“These untainted vegetables fetch me a premium in the market,” says Singh, as he prepares to spray a white powder on the crop. “Spraying this at regular intervals ensures that my plants stay healthy and green until harvest.”
The powder, which Singh has been using so generously for last few decades, is streptocycline — a mixture of two antibiotics used for treating life-threatening bacterial infections in humans. In fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognises the antibiotics — streptomycin and tetracycline — as “critically” and “highly” important for human medicine.
Streptomycin is used in humans for “previously treated tuberculosis” that accounts for over 10 per cent of the estimated 2.7 million TB incidences in India. It is also used to treat multidrug-resistant TB and certain cases of TB meningitis. Resistance to streptomycin is already high and its large-scale non-human use could add to the problem.
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