LONDON, May 7. /TASS/. The healthcare crisis in Ukraine has created a favorable environment for the so-called superbugs, or dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria, The i Paper portal said.

"When it comes to Ukraine, a combination of overcrowded hospital wards, weak infection control and micro-dosing of antibiotics to prolong supplies are resulting in the spread of superbugs," the newspaper wrote.

The report says that the situation was caused in part by understaffing and underfunding of the healthcare sector in the country.

"My colleagues, just normal doctors, tell me their salaries have been reduced and they don’t have normal antibiotics, even in Kiev. That’s a big problem when it comes to AMR [antimicrobial resistance]," said Yelena Moshinets, a microbiologist at the Kiev Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics.

In such cases, infected limbs are often amputated in an attempt to somehow stop the infection from proliferating. However, a patient may start producing antibiotic-resistant bacteria about two or three years later. "You’re basically becoming a biological weapon," said Danilo Turkevich, the head of the surgery department at a Ukrainian hospital.

The antibiotic-resistant bacteria issue is not limited to Ukraine, but poses a threat to Europe as well, because sometimes Ukrainian patients are sent there for treatment.

Richard Sullivan, the co-director of the Centre for Conflict & Health Research at Kings College London, said that European programs tend to focus on high-threat infectious diseases such as dengue fever and rabies, often overlooking the problem of antimicrobial resistance.