Antibiotics and other antimicrobial drugs — miracle medicines that have saved tens of millions of lives since they became widely available in the 1940s — are losing their ability to cure. This is one of the gravest, most complex public health challenges facing humanity. Our series, “Deadly Germs, Lost Cures,” explained the economic and scientific forces behind it and the culture of secrecy that has blinded the public to the growing threat. The series, the product of a year of reporting, included 11 major articles; we are entering five of them in this contest.
1. A Mysterious Infection, Spreading the Globe in a Climate of Secrecy chronicled the rise and spread of a lethal new drug-resistant germ, Candida auris, in a tale that took readers from Brooklyn to Britain, India and Pakistan and from hospital to lab to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. C. auris was virtually unheard of before the article ran; afterward, media from People to “60 Minutes” did pieces. Millions of people read our article and it ranked 13th on Chartbeat’s most engaging stories of 2019.
2. Tainted Pork, Ill Consumers and An Investigation Thwarted revealed how corporate and agricultural interests keep scientists and public health officials from fully investigating the source of drug-resistant food poisoning. We reconstructed an outbreak of resistant salmonella in Washington state and showed how pressure from the pork industry kept investigators from even entering the farms that raised the pigs.
3. In a Poor Kenyan Community, Cheap Antibiotics Fuel Deadly, Drug-Resistant Infections detailed the vast overuse of cheap antibiotics in developing nations, which is exacerbating the problem of drug resistance by prompting the germs to mutate to survive. Urban poverty and poor sanitary conditions then spread the drug-resistant pathogens. We reported this article from an impoverished neighborhood in Nairobi, Kenya, with vivid detail.
4. Nursing Homes Are a Breeding Ground for a Fatal Fungus exposed how Candida auris and other drug-resistant germs have taken root in nursing homes, which are often understaffed and ill-equipped to enforce rigorous infection control. As a result, they continuously cycle infected patients into hospitals and back again. The article focused on a Brooklyn nursing home, Palm Gardens.
5. Crisis Looms in Antibiotics as Drug Makers Go Bankrupt reported that numerous drug companies that had been developing new antibiotics and bringing them to market were finding they could not make money from the drugs and were going out of business, a grave development that is undermining efforts to contain the spread of deadly, drug-resistant bacteria.