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हिन्दी — Read in HindiAntimicrobial resistance
Antimicrobial resistance in hospitals, on farms and in the environment, and the few new drugs against it. Prelims has asked why multi drug resistance occurs in microbial pathogens in India.
Foundation note: Antimicrobial resistance: how it arises and India's plan
Showing 1 of 2 articles, those that changed from 1 to 30 September 2026.Show all
Gram-negative bacteria
Copy link to Gram-negative bacteriaPrelims and Mains
Gram-negative bacteria are one of the two groups into which a nineteenth century staining test, the Gram stain, sorts bacteria, and the harder of the two to treat.
- The Gram stain, devised by Hans Christian Gram in the 1880s, sorts bacteria by whether their cell wall holds crystal violet.
- That split still decides which antibiotics can reach them.
- Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae are Gram-negative, and cause many hospital infections.
- Their outer membrane, which Gram-positive bacteria lack, keeps many antibiotics out, so the difficulty is structural rather than anything to do with how the drugs have been used.
- Once such a strain resists carbapenems, few medicines remain.
What changed
2 Sep 2026
- ICMR reported on 2 September 2026 that over 61 per cent of the Gram-negative infections studied in tertiary care hospitals were carbapenem resistant.
- Resistant infections carried a higher risk of death, and cost more in antibiotics, than susceptible ones.
- Over 85 per cent of bloodstream infections were healthcare associated.
- The priorities named were infection prevention and control, integrated surveillance, antimicrobial stewardship and newer antibiotics.