Prophylactic antibiotics are given as standard practice to patients undergoing surgery and cancer treatment to prevent infection and death.
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In the worst scenario, a 70% drop in efficacy was expected to add 5,000 lost lives to the USA death toll.
They predict that just a 30% reduction in the efficacy of preventive antibiotics given routinely before, during or after these procedures could result in 120,000 more infections and 6,300 infection-related deaths every year in the US.
Experts including the Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies have repeatedly warned that patients could soon die from minor scratches and routine operations after contracting a lethal bug which cannot be treated.
A recent study by researchers at Duke University showed that rates of drug-resistant E. coli infections have doubled in the past five years at 26 community hospitals in the southeastern United States.
But these drugs are gradually losing their effectiveness as the bacteria they’re supposed to kill have evolved defenses and are becoming impervious to the most powerful antibiotics in the world. He said more information was urgently needed so that recommendations on which drugs to give patients could be modified, “but we also need new strategies for the prevention and control of antibiotic resistance at national and worldwide levels”.
The CFS would like to see “restrictions on the use of other antibiotics and other drugs in animal production, and also requirements on animal welfare, such as stronger sanitary requirements and more space for animals so that they can exhibit natural behaviors” which is “critical to preserving these drugs for human use, and also to encourage producers to improve the living conditions of these animals so that drugs are less necessary”, Spector says.
Center for Food Safety praised the California bill, stating that the US CDC has identified antibiotic resistance as “one of the top health threats facing the nation, putting the effectiveness of essential medicines at risk”.
She said she hoped the report would be “a loud “wake-up call” to pharmaceutical companies” to research and develop new treatment for bacterial infections. “But how well these turn out depends on how well the antibiotics used to keep infections away during surgery work”.
Dr. Laxminarayan suggests a multi-pronged solution to the problem: Doctors need to be trained on when (and when not) to prescribe antibiotics and how to minimize infections after common surgeries.
Prof Nigel Brown, president of the Microbiology Society, said the study was robust.
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“Antibiotic resistance is a global problem and it is likely that routine surgery such as hip replacement and elective caesarean sections will become much rarer in the United Kingdom, unless steps are taken to prevent its spread”.
