{"id":2330,"date":"2019-11-18T09:05:36","date_gmt":"2019-11-18T14:05:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/?p=2330"},"modified":"2019-11-18T09:05:36","modified_gmt":"2019-11-18T14:05:36","slug":"antibiotics-awareness-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/antibiotics-awareness-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Antibiotics Awareness Week"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Antibiotics save lives and are critical tools for treating a number of common and more serious infections, like those that can lead to sepsis. However, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), at least 30% of the antibiotics in U.S. outpatient settings are prescribed <em>unnecessarily<\/em>. Any time antibiotics are used, they can lead to antibiotic resistance, a growing and urgent threat to the public\u2019s health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to the CDC, antibiotic-resistant\nbacteria are most prevalent in environments associated with high antibiotic\nuse: healthcare settings, the general community, and in livestock production. &nbsp;Antibiotic resistance can spread from person\nto person, from animal to person, via the natural environment or contaminated\nfood and from bacteria to bacteria. &nbsp;Some\nbacteria have developed resistance to multiple antibiotics, making them\nespecially difficult to treat, and thus very dangerous and sometimes deadly. &nbsp;Common infectious diseases such as tuberculosis,\npneumonia, blood poisoning, food poisoning, and gonorrhea have already become\nharder and sometimes impossible to treat due to multidrug-resistant bacteria. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The problem of antibiotics-resistance is not just one found in the\nUnited States, it is a worldwide problem.&nbsp;\nAnd worldwide problems demand global responses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This week the United States, in coordination with nations across\nthe world, are focusing in educating the health care providers, policymakers,\nand the public on the growing threat posed by antibiotic resistant infections,\nalso known as \u201csuperbugs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Antibiotic resistance happens when bacteria develop the ability to\ndefeat the drugs designed to kill them. &nbsp;Each\nyear in the United States, more than 2.8 million infections from bacteria that\nare resistant to antibiotics occur and more than 35,000 people die as a direct\nresult. &nbsp;Many more die from complications\nfrom antibiotic-resistant infections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A study commissioned by\nthe U.K. government predicts that if action is not taken now to combat antibiotic\nresistance,by 2050 the annual death toll will have risen to <em>10 million globally<\/em><strong>. &nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The situation is getting\nworse with the emergence of new bacterial strains resistant to several\nantibiotics at the same time (known as multidrug-resistant bacteria). Such\nbacteria may eventually become resistant to <em>all<\/em> existing antibiotics.\nWithout antibiotics, the world could return to the \u201cpre-antibiotic era\u201d, when\norgan transplants, cancer chemotherapy, intensive care and other medical\nprocedures would no longer be possible. &nbsp;Bacterial\ndiseases would spread and could no longer be treated, causing death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is hope.&nbsp; Data from European agencies show that\ninterventions can work.&nbsp; Medical data\nshows that Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands have low rates of\n\u201csuperbugs,\u201d but that there are higher rates in Southern Europe. &nbsp;Countries with lower resistance rates have\ngenerally lower use of antibiotics, while countries with higher antibiotic\nresistance rates use more antibiotics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One area of antibiotic misuse is relatively simple to address: use\non farms.&nbsp; Nearly two-thirds of\nantibiotics that are important for human medicine are currently sold for use in\nlivestock, not people. These drugs are routinely given as poor compensation for\ninappropriate diets and the stressful, crowded and unsanitary conditions on\nindustrial feedlots. This practice hastens the spread of antibiotic resistance\nin bacteria and increases the risk of drug-resistant infections in people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When antibiotics are\ngiven to food-producing animals, they kill most of the bacteria in them. The\nresistant bacteria, however, survive and can contaminate animal products during\nslaughtering and processing. They can also contaminate fruits and vegetables\nvia contaminated soil or water, especially when animal manure is used as\nfertilizer. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria can contaminate food prepared on\ngerm-filled surfaces and the environment via animal feces. According to the\nCDC, approximately 1 in 5 antibiotic-resistant infections are caused by germs\nfrom food and animals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, awareness weeks\nare only as good as the change they produce.&nbsp;\nIt is clear from the Scandinavian experiences that policies can\nsignificantly reduce the rise of \u201csuperbugs\u201d: policies that focus on\ncleanliness in health care settings, a reliance on antibiotic use in humans\nonly when medically necessary, and a drastic reduction in use on farm\nanimals.&nbsp; The most obvious way to reduce\nuse among farm animals is for veterinarians to stop the use of antibiotics on\nhealthy farm animals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is a worldwide\nproblem, unless the rise of \u201csuperbugs\u201d can be stopped, the next generation\nwill be faced with a world without effective antibiotics, one in which\nillnesses like urinary tract infections will be untreatable, leaving people to\nsuffer and perhaps die, from infections easily treatable today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Antibiotics save lives and are critical tools for treating a number of common and more serious infections, like those that can lead to sepsis. However, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), at least 30% of the antibiotics in U.S. outpatient settings are prescribed unnecessarily. Any time antibiotics are used, they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2330"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2331,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2330\/revisions\/2331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}