Recently a The Hill article http://thehill.com * noted: “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warns that the government needs to take immediate action before we live in a world where life-saving antibiotics are no longer effective.”
“Every day we delay it becomes harder and more expensive to fix this problem,” said CDC Director Thomas Frieden …Frieden says the healthcare system needs to improve how it detects patients with drug-resistant infections, controls the spread of such infections, prevents them from happening in the first place and incentivizes drugmakers to develop new antibiotics.
“We talk about the pre-antibiotic era and the antibiotic era; if we’re not careful we will soon be in the post-antibiotic era,” he said. “And, in fact, for some patients and some pathogens we’re already there.”
“The CDC is launching a new system this week that lets hospitals track all the antibiotics dispensed and look at real-time patterns of antibiotic resistance, so doctors can narrow down which antibiotics are most likely to work.”
“Frieden warns that 23,000 Americans die from drug-resistant infections annually. He also said hundreds of thousands of cancer patients rely on antibiotics after chemotherapy because their immune systems become compromised.
“The CDC says every hospital should have an “antibiotic stewardship program” that tracks how antibiotics are used to try minimize overuse of the drugs, which can lead to drug resistance. “We’ve done a study that says about a third of all antibiotics used in this country are either unnecessary or inappropriate,” Frieden said.”
* to read the full The Hill article “CDC director warns of ‘post-antibiotic era’” by Ferdous Al-Faruque, highlight and clck on open hyperlink
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/213011-cdc-director-warns-of-post-antibiotic-era
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Jonathan M. Metsch, Dr.P.H., is Clinical Professor, Preventive Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; and Adjunct Professor, Baruch College ( C.U.N.Y.), Rutgers School of Public Health, and Rutgers School of Public Affairs and Administration
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