From USA Today:

BOSTON (AP) — An infectious-disease nightmare is unfolding: A new gene that can turn many types of bacteria into superbugs resistant to nearly all antibiotics has sickened people in three states and is popping up all over the world, health officials reported Monday.

The U.S. cases and two others in Canada all involve people who had recently received medical care in India, where the problem is widespread. A British medical journal revealed the risk last month in an article describing dozens of cases in Britain in people who had gone to India for medical procedures.

How many deaths the gene may have caused is unknown; there is no central tracking of such cases. So far, the gene has mostly been found in bacteria that cause gut or urinary infections.

Scientists have long feared this — a very adaptable gene that hitches onto many types of common germs and confers broad drug resistance.

Researchers have been warning about drug resistant bugs like MRSA for years. NDM-1 has the potential to make the already deadly MRSA strains even harder to treat as well as making common infections deadly. Of course authorities are telling people to avoid using antibiotics but that’s a too little too late scenario. Keeping yourself as clean as possible (including irrigating and cleaning even minor wounds) is now a must.

On the herbal front there’s been studies suggesting green tea has the ability to boost the effectiveness of antibiotics and “photo-medicine” or light therapy has show great promise in treating infections. The theory there being that a device like this Light Relief, which uses infrared light to treat minor pain, may also inhibit or retard the growth of antibiotic resistant superbugs.

Honey also has been used extensively to treat infections and covering a wound with it will stop infection from setting in.

h/t N.T.A.