A leading medical expert has warned that the excessive use of antibiotics in the country's health system and agricultural industry can make China vulnerable to an explosion of superbugs resistant to almost all drugs.

China is among the world's most reckless antibiotics users with doctors routinely prescribing multiple doses to treat simple conditions such as fever, colds and sore throats, said Zhong Nanshan, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a medical tutor with the World Health Organization .

To make matters worse, the country also depends on the massive use of antibiotics in its fishing and agricultural industries, leading to a tainted food chain, Zhong said.

Chinese people consumed 10 times more antibiotics than their counterparts in the United States, but 20 percent of that was not necessary, Zhong said on Tuesday's West China City Daily.

The rampant overuse has caused a frightening increase in drug-resistant bacteria, Zhong added.

This has put the country in great danger from a possible outbreak of the latest superbug to be discovered, which is resistant to all the most power drugs, including antibiotics.

The bacteria, believed to have originated in India and which has spread to other parts of the world including the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Japan, has so far infected 170 people and killed at least five patients.

The superbug is, in effect, a new gene called New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase, or NDM-1, which makes bacteria highly resistant to almost all antibiotics.

The Ministry of Health said earlier the superbug hadn't been detected on the Chinese mainland so far.

The way to fight it, however, experts say, is to reduce the use of antibiotics and make new medical breakthroughs.

Prescription guidelines to restrict antibiotic use were issued by the Ministry of Health in 2004.

The State Food and Drug Administration also bans the sale of antibiotics without a prescription.

However, some hospitals, driven by the profits to be made by selling drugs, are still keen to promote the use of antibiotics.

(Xinhua News Agency September 8, 2010)