16 Sep New CDC report warns sternly against overuse of antibiotics
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is speaking out stronger than ever against the overuse of antibiotic medications.
According to a recent 114-page report that was written for the general public, overuse of antibiotics has led to the growth of drug-resistant superbugs in the U.S.
This is already compromising doctors’ ability to treat infections, and the problem could get much worse in the future.
CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden hopes this report encourages everyone from doctors to patients to protect what he termed a “precious national resource.”
“We talk about a pre-antibiotic era and an antibiotic era,” Frieden told the Associated Press. “If we’re not careful, we’ll be in a post-antibiotic era. For some patients and some microbes, we’re already there.”
Bacteria can often develop resistances to antibiotic drugs, evolving to get even stronger.
Those surviving bacteria can in turn spread, and may even go on to share their drug-resistant genes with other bugs, with the cycle continuing on and on. The CDC report provided an antibiotic-resistance chart to paint a picture of how this works.
The report estimated that more than 2 million people get antibiotic-resistant infections every year, and that 23,000 die from those illnesses.
The U.S. can reduce the need for antibiotics by taking these actions, the CDC said: immunizations, hand-washing and other precautions, such as limiting use of antibiotics, tracking “super bugs” more carefully and development new drugs to treat infections.
The threat of super bugs that are resistant to antibiotics is not breaking news, but this CDC report lays out in the most detail yet how seriously this threat should be taken. And it’s up to everyone to make sure they use traditional antibiotics as little as possible to help prevent the spread of super bugs.
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