THE GROWTH IN ‘medical tourism’ has been blamed for the spread of a new antibiotic-resistant superbug found in European hospitals.

The germ represents a “clear and frightening danger”‘ and may become a worldwide endemic, an article in today’s Lancet Infectious Diseases calims.

The bacteria, which have been isolated in 37 cases in Britain and in India, have developed near total resistance to all forms of antibiotics.

The team of international researchers who made the discovery describe the emergence of the germs as a “worldwide public health” threat and call for “co-ordinated international surveillance”.

The researchers described how common bacteria such as E.coli have begun to pick up a specific gene, called NDM-1, that renders them resistant to all but the most powerful antibiotics.

The NDM-1 gene has “an alarming potential to spread and diversify among bacterial populations”, they warn.

The spread of the super-resistant gene had been aided by international travel, and by so called “medical tourism” – the trend for people to travel abroad for cosmetic surgery and other procedures – the authors claim.

A number of the UK patients presenting with the resistant bacteria “had undergone elective, including cosmetic, surgery while visiting India or Pakistan”, the report reveals.

The grim news comes just as the swine flu pandemic is declared officially over.