NEW DELHI India has reacted angrily to a medical study linking Indian hospitals to a multi-resistant “superbug,” with some politicians claiming a conspiracy against the countrys booming medical tourism industry.

The study, published in the British medical journal The Lancet, said health tourists flocking to South Asia had carried a new class of antibiotic-resistant superbug to Britain, and warned that it could spread worldwide.

In a strong statement issued late Thursday, the Indian health ministry criticised the report for scaremongering and took particular exception to the naming of the NDM-1 bacteria or “New Delhi metallo-lactamase-1”.

The ministry acknowledged that such bacteria might circulate more widely with advances in international travel.

“But to link this with the safety of surgery in hospitals in India and citing isolated examples to show that... India is not a safe place to visit, is wrong,” the statement said.

“We strongly refute the naming of the enzyme... and also refute that hospitals in India are not safe for treatment including medical tourism.”

The NDM-1 gene was first identified last year by Cardiff University's Timothy Walsh in two types of bacteria Klebsiella pneumoniae and Escherichia coli -- in a Swedish patient admitted to hospital in India.

Worryingly, the new NDM-1-carrying bacteria are resistant even to carbapenems, a group of antibiotics often reserved as a last resort for emergency treatment for multi-drug resistant bugs.

Researchers said the bugs had been brought into Britain by patients who travelled to India or Pakistan for cosmetic surgery.

South Asia, and India in particular, is undergoing a medical tourism boom, with swanky new hospitals and well-trained medical staff offering everything from facelifts to fertility treatments and open-heart surgery at half the price of western Europe.

The Lancet study was mentioned in India's parliament with some angry MPs denouncing what they saw as a plot by global pharmaceutical firms.

“When India is emerging as a medical tourism destination, this type of news is unfortunate and may be a sinister design of multi-national companies,” said Hindu-nationalist MP SS Ahluwalia.

India has been criticised in the past for having a loose policy on antibiotics use, with the result that they are over-prescribed and over-used to the point where resistant strains become more common.

VM Katoch, director general of the Indian Council of Medical Research, told AFP that multiple drug resistance was “always a concern”.

“But when you draw conclusions that link it to a specific country, then you are going too far,” Katoch said.

“When you link it to our antibiotics policy... say it is dangerous to get operated on in India and that you will get more infections, that is totally irrational.”In the new study, led by Walsh and Chennai Universitys Karthikeyan Kumarasamy, researchers set out to determine how common the NDM-1-carrying bacteria were in South Asia and Britain, where several cases had turned up.

Checking hospital patients with suspected symptoms, they found 44 cases 1.5 per cent of those screened in Chennai, and 26 (eight percent of those screened) in Haryana, both in India.

They likewise found the superbug in Bangladesh and Pakistan, as well as 37 cases in Britain, some in patients who had recently returned from having cosmetic surgery in India or Pakistan.

Anil Chadha, a senior plastic surgeon in the west Indian city of Ahmedabad, said the way the study had been reported in the media was bound to scare off some foreigners.

“People will think twice before coming to India for a treatment. I think the reports are economically motivated to prevent patients coming here,” Chadha told AFP.

Another plastic surgeon, K.M Kapoor, based in the northern city of Mohali, agreed that the study was being used to “malign” Indias health system.

“And naming the bug after New Delhi is simply ridiculous,” he added. - AFP