To try and eliminate the bacteria, doctors were forced to halt Aerti’s chemotherapy and remove the catheter that was providing her with life-saving cancer drugs and nutrition – an extremely risky move given the severity of her diagnosis. 

Aerti was placed in an isolation ward for several weeks. “I couldn’t hug or touch my mother, it really devastated me,” she told the ECDC. 

After a course of last-line antibiotics, doctors finally cleared the infection from Aerit’s bloodstream, and she later recovered from cancer, too. “I am fully aware that my success story is dramatically close to the stories of other patients who did not win those battles,” she said. 

The ECDC is set to introduce new measures for its member states to follow in a bid to tackle AMR, which will mark the first time standardised guidelines in healthcare facilities have been rolled out across EU member states. 

They include a series of recommendations, including exceeding basic measures like prioritising hand-washing.

Unwashed hands are a major way in which doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers inadvertently pass resistant infections from one patient to another. 

The guidelines also encourage hospitals to build capacity for isolation rooms, so patients infected with resistant bacteria can’t spread the infection to others in the vicinity. 

“Fighting AMR means saving lives, protecting our health systems, and the foundations of modern medicine,” Pamela Rendi-Wagner of the ECDC said.

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