‘Harry doesn’t have a lot of options left’: Meet the paediatrician battling antibiotic resistance every day
Associate Professor Penelope Bryant has co-authored a major study showing that in the next decade 35% of klebsiella infections will be resistant to at least one last line of defence agent.
One of the patients Associate Professor Penelope Bryant helps to treat is Harry, a 13-year-old with an unwanted place on the front line of antimicrobial resistance.
Born with renal failure, he was on dialysis by six months of age and later underwent a renal transplant after his father donated a kidney.
Being on immunosuppressants has meant Harry has spent much of his life on antibiotics for frequent UTIs and other infections.
But he is now colonised by bacteria resistant to common first-line options, says Professor Bryant, a paediatric infectious diseases consultant with the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne.
