If the global commitment leads to new approaches, it would be particularly important for poor countries, where a high burden of infectious diseases, lack of access to vaccines and life-saving drugs, and poor health infrastructure have contributed to spiralling levels of drug resistance.
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A 2015 Consumer Reports survey found that 41 percent of US adults were completely unaware of the problem of antibiotic resistance. In the US, antibiotic-resistant microorganisms cause over two million illnesses and approximately 23,000 deaths each year as a direct result of antibiotic-resistant infection.
He and his colleagues explained the scope of the issue in the September 20 Journal of the American Medical Association.
Implementing change is not possible without concerted action from all states. Antibiotics work by isolating and killing the bacteria at the root of the cause.
“Antibiotic resistance is responsible for 700,000 deaths globally and 50,000 deaths within the United States of America and Europe every year”. “No one country, sector or organization can address this issue alone”.
“And that’s not to treat infections”, Fauci said. And new superbugs are cropping up – even here in the USA – that are resistant to last-resort drugs.
“Such plans are needed to understand the full scale of the problem and stop the misuse of antimicrobial medicines in human health, animal health and agriculture”, note WHO, FAO and OIE. For example, colistin – a “last resort” antibiotic in human medicine – is frequently used to mass-medicate pigs and poultry. Every time an antibiotic is used, it gives pathogens a chance to evolve resistance.
And then there’s humans’ overuse and misuse of antibiotics.
Some common infections like pneumonia, gonorrhea, and post-operative infections are becoming harder to treat because of drug-resistant strains.
Laura Kahn, a physician and research scholar at Princeton University, says actually, worldwide cooperation is our best shot at fighting antibiotic resistance. Another large-scale use of antimicrobials – mostly antibiotics – has been in farming, to promote animal growth.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, up to half of antibiotic prescriptions in U.S. hospitals are unnecessary.
“We need new antibiotics, but in all likelihood we’re not going to invent our way out of this”, Frieden said. All what it takes would be another outbreak, or pandemic, caused by a drug-resistant microorganism. He agreed that public awareness is vital. A new report published this week (Sept. 20) by the Natural Resources Defense Council shows that in just the previous year, the number of U.S. fast food chains that have adopted supply chain policies aimed at reducing the on-farm use of antibiotics for the meat products they sell has doubled.
Developing global standards of responsible antibiotic use in livestock.
She said Australian Pork Limited had recently combined with the Australian Chicken Meat Federation and the Australian Lot Feeders’ Association to develop an antimicrobial stewardship plan that she hoped would soon be signed off on by board members. Stopping early can boost the odds that some bad bugs will survive, mutate and become resistant to the drug. Food companies are not especially transparent about what drugs are being used on different species and how they are being used, and the government mandates little be made public.
But a US law that, among other things, extended companies’ patent exclusivity seems to have had some impact. And about three dozen are under development. “Companies should have the social responsibility to do what they can in other countries”. “It’s very easy to do compared to developing new antibiotics”.
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But, he added, older antibiotics that have fallen out of favor should not be forgotten. “It can undermine modern medicine”, he said. The one day meeting of the United Nations General Assembly marks only the fourth time the group has met to discuss a health crisis. The agreement “doesn’t go as far as I had hoped but it certainly goes further than I had expected, the reason being this is the U.N. It’s not a body that typically deals with health issues”, says Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Washington, D.C. -based Center for Disease Dynamics Economics & Policy.
