The Challenge

What happens when you develop an infection? Most likely you will visit a doctor and he or she will prescribe an antibiotic. But what if the infection does not respond positively to treatment? Well, then usually tests are done to find a suitable alternative antibiotic. The challenge today however is that more and more of these bacteria that cause infections are becoming resistant against antibiotics and it usually takes a few years to develop new antibiotics.

Since I've personally lived with such an antibiotic resistant strain of infection since 2001, I was strongly motivated to find out whether there were any alternative treatment available (read more about my story on my blog:
http://choosinganenabledlife.blogspot.com/). In 2007, I discovered information about phage therapy.

Nature's forgotten cure
"In December 2002, three woodsmen in the mountains of Georgia stumbled upon a pair of canisters that were, oddly, hot to the touch. The men lugged the objects back to their campsite to warm themselves on a bitterly cold night. That turned out to be a terrible mistake: The canisters, Soviet relics once used to power remote generators, were intensely radioactive and burned two of the men severely. The victims were rushed to the capital, Tbilisi, where doctors plied them with antibiotics but failed to prevent staphylococcus bacteria from invading the deep wounds. Septic shock seemed just around the corner.

Then a kinder legacy of the Soviet Union came to the rescue. Georgian doctors turned to a therapy virtually unknown in the West: They unleashed the bacteria’s natural predators. The doctors covered the open wounds with novel biodegradable patches impregnated with bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria. The business card–sized PhageBioDerm patches, recently licensed for sale in Georgia, eliminated the infection, and within a few weeks the woodsmen were stable enough to go abroad for treatment to replace the lost skin."
http://sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/298/5594/730

In 2007 I saw a video about an American man with diabetes who was in danger of losing his foot, because he also had a drug resistant strain of bacterial infection. His sister heard about a hospital in Tibilisi, Georgia, near Russia that used an alternative form of highly successful treatment for drug resistant strains of infection called Phage Therapy. They raised money for him to go there and after a month of treatment his foot was saved and his diabetic ulcer was well on its way to healing.

In nature, the natural predator of bacteria, are microscopic viruses called phages or bacteriophages. These viruses infiltrate the bacteria and destroy them from the inside out. The treatment is harmless for humans and animals as our bodies just excretes the viruses and then it ends up in sewerage which is exactly where the phages are harvested from for treatment.

Phage therapy has been around since the 1920’s when research was also done at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, but when antibiotics was developed in the form of Penicillin, the western world forgot about phage therapy. Why you might ask? Well, antibiotics can be mass produced and can be patented or licensed which means that drug companies can make a lot of money from it.

1. On the other hand, phage treatments are developed very specifically for specific bacterial infections for treatment of a specific patient, so mass producing it is less feasible and licensing something as natural as a micro-virus is more difficult. But while it takes 5-12 years to develop a new antibiotic, it only takes 1-2 weeks to develop a new phage preparation so the treatment in itself becomes more accessible and affordable.
   
   In Eastern Europe, medical personnel did not have easy access to antibiotics and it was too expensive anyway so they focused on perfecting phage therapy. In Stalin’s time, soldiers were sent into combat situations with a spray can filled with phage preparations to treat the most likely bacterial infections. Today, people who are given no hope by the conventional medical profession anymore are flocking to Tibilisi as medical tourists. When I read that they have a 97% success rate with osteomyelitis, my condition, I was fired up to raise money to go there for treatment.
   
   My personal detour
   Before I could act on my intention, I became critically ill and was admitted to hospital in January 2009 (read the whole story on my blog: http://choosinganenabledlife.blogspot.com/). Thanks to my wonderful doctors, my life was saved and at first it seemed as if conventional antibiotic treatment would deal with the infection. Although the infection is under control, the open wounds that still need to heal and me being catherised, means that bacterial infection is a constant threat for me.
   
   I've been on antibiotics for almost 5 months now on and off and I can feel the negative impact it has on my body. Although it deals with an infection on the one hand, it also affects the functioning of the immune system as well. On the other hand, Phage Therapy has no negative side effects.
   
   In South Africa, we have so many people who are HIV positive and who face a real life threat when developing opportunistic infections. Many TB sufferers also have multi-drug resistant forms of infections.Would it not be wonderful to convince the new Minister of Health to send a team of health professionals to investigate bringing phage therapy to South Africa?
   
   Opportunity beckons
   I want to invite you to participate in a campaign to explore bringing phage therapy to South Africa. After 4 months in hospital (read the full story on my blog: http://choosinganenabledlife.blogspot.com/), I am launching a fundraising campaign to cover my outstanding medical bills and my living and treatment costs for the next 4 months. It will take me about that time to regain my strength and for the wounds to completely heal.
   
   Although I will not be able to work full time, I should be able to use my time to start and facilitate the campaign to request the Minister of Health to consider sending a team to explore phage therapy as an option. I will also offer myself as a test subject and explore if there are other people with drug-resistant type of infections who are interested to do the same.

The target is an estimated R150 000 and how you can participate is as follows:

1. Join the blog as a follower
2. Consider contributing to the trust fund (see details in the Participate in the Campaign post). We only need 1000 people donating R150 each to reach the target.
3. Share the blog with other people and encourage them to join.

I will keep you updated with progress made and invite you also to share any ideas you might have. Do you believe it is possible, let's borrow newly elected President Obama's slogan for our campaign and also say: "Yes we can!"

I hope you will join me in this exciting initiative.

Jeanne Smuts