They turned to colistin, as it's named, an antibiotic that is not a new creation. In fact, it was actually discovered growing in a beaker of fermenting bacteria in Japan in 1949, just a few years after the end of World War II.

What made doctors so desperate that they had to turn to an old drug with dangerous side-effects? (colistin is known to cause kidney damage, the Washington Post reported). A significant lack of new antibiotics from drug manufacturers.

There are so few new antibiotics in the Big Pharma pipeline, despite a global epidemic of superbugs acquired in hospitals that have quickly grown resistant to existing antibiotics, that doctors have had to turn to older, though more dangerous, standbys.