The bacteria was also found in another sample collected from an 83-year-old man in the southeastern province of Fujian who succumbed to lung cancer in June, Ni Daxin, an official at the CDC, was quoted by Xinhua as saying.

China's Disease Control and Prevention Center reports that the superbug NDM-1 has been found in three test samples obtained from hospital patients.

China CDC collected samples between the end of August and early September, Xu Jianguo, director of the agency's infection prevention and control department, said.

The two babies have since recovered and are healthy, while the superbug's role in the man's death is still to be confirmed, he added.

The bacteria is found to be highly resistant to almost all antibiotics, including the most powerful class, known as Carbapenems, the Lancet, the journal of infectious diseases, reported in August.

NDM-1 is most prevalent in South Asia, in countries such as India and Pakistan, and has also been reported in some Western countries including Britain, Canada and the United States. The World Health Organization has urged countries to be vigilant.

The emergence of the NDM-1 gene has caused concern around the world. China, which was criticized for its slow handling of the outbreak of SARS in 2003 and for concealing true case numbers, is not an exception.

The reason the China CDC delayed releasing information on the three NDM-1 cases until one month after their test is because a large quantity of data needed to be selected and sampled from the nationwide database, Ni added.

Fears over NDM-1 increased after another multi-drug-resistant superbug was reported to have killed 18 people in Brazil recently after they contracted a bacteria that produces the enzyme Klebsiella pneumoniae Carbapenemase (KPC).

Some Chinese health authorities believe that the overuse of antibiotics has contributed to the spread of antibiotic bacteria.

"Hospitals should stop using antibiotics on patients because of a lack of knowledge regarding dosage. The general public should also be educated about the use of antibiotics and avoid pressuring doctors to use large dosages," Lv Yuan, vice director of the Institute of Clinical Pharmacology at Peking University First Hospital, told the Global Times.

She also said easy access to antibiotics aggravates the problem as, in many cases, antibiotics can be obtained without prescription.

A total of 80,000 people die due to the overuse of antibiotics in China every year, according to Chongqing Evening News, citing official figures from 1995 to 2007.