State lawmakers return from their Presidents\u2019 Week \u201cmini-break\u201d and begin to seriously debate the next state budget.\u00a0 New York\u2019s fiscal year starts on April first, thus giving Albany 5 weeks to negotiate the proposed $178 billion state budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contained in that budget are many important policies \u2013 from\nMedicaid spending to higher education to the environment to education\nfinancing. Most of the budget\u2019s \u201ctop\nline\u201d items are publicly debated; sometime equally important items are\nnot. One under-debated issue is the\nrising threat from infections that are increasingly resistant to antibiotics,\nalso known as \u201csuperbugs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease\nControl and Prevention (CDC), antibiotic-resistant\nbacteria are most prevalent in environments associated with high antibiotic\nuse: healthcare settings, the general community, and in livestock production. Antibiotic resistance can spread from person\nto person, from animal to person, via the natural environment or contaminated\nfood and from bacteria to bacteria. Some\nbacteria have developed resistance to multiple antibiotics, making them\nespecially difficult to treat, and thus very dangerous and sometimes deadly. Common infectious diseases such as\ntuberculosis, pneumonia, blood poisoning, food poisoning, and gonorrhea have\nalready become harder and sometimes impossible to treat due to\nmultidrug-resistant bacteria. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The problem of antibiotics-resistance is not just one found in the\nUnited States, it is a worldwide problem. \nAnd worldwide problems demand global responses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Antibiotic resistance happens when bacteria develop the ability to\ndefeat the drugs designed to kill them. 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. Many more die from complications\nfrom antibiotic-resistant infections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A study commissioned by\nthe U.K. government predicts that if action is not taken now to combat\nantibiotic resistance,by 2050 the annual death toll will have risen\nto 10 million globally<\/em>. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 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. Bacterial\ndiseases would spread and could no longer be treated, causing death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is hope. Data from European agencies show that\ninterventions can work. Medical data\nshows that Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands have low rates of\nsuperbugs, but that there are higher rates in Southern Europe. 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 Buried in the governor\u2019s\nproposed health budget is an item to begin to address the rise of antibiotics\nresistant superbugs. In his budget, the\ngovernor proposed that every general hospital and nursing home must establish\nan antibiotic stewardship program that meets or exceeds federal conditions of\nparticipation for antimicrobial stewardship programs in health care facilities.\nAdditionally, such program shall incorporate an ongoing process to measure the\nimpact of the program. While vague, the\ngovernor\u2019s program leaves the details up to the state\u2019s Health Commissioner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet, the governor\u2019s plan\nleaves out an important area of antibiotics overuse and misuse: use on farms. Nearly two-thirds<\/em> of antibiotics that\nare important for human medicine are currently sold for use in livestock<\/em>,\nnot people. These drugs are routinely given as poor compensation for inappropriate\ndiets and the stressful, crowded and unsanitary conditions on industrial\nfeedlots. This practice hastens the spread of antibiotic resistance in bacteria\nand increases the risk of drug-resistant infections in people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 via\ncontaminated 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 Thus, the governor\u2019s plan\nignores 20 percent of the problem \u2013 and in dealing with the growing menace of\nsuperbugs, comprehensive approaches are the only ones that will work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It is clear from the\nScandinavian experiences that policies can significantly reduce the rise of\n\u201csuperbugs\u201d: policies that focus on cleanliness in health care settings, a\nreliance on antibiotic use in humans only when medically necessary, and a\ndrastic reduction in use on farm animals. \nThe most obvious way to reduce use among farm animals is for veterinarians\nto stop the use of antibiotics on healthy livestock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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":" State lawmakers return from their Presidents\u2019 Week \u201cmini-break\u201d and begin to seriously debate the next state budget.\u00a0 New York\u2019s fiscal year starts on April first, thus giving Albany 5 weeks to negotiate the proposed $178 billion state budget. Contained in that budget are many important policies \u2013 from Medicaid spending to higher education to the […]<\/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-2365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2365","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=2365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2366,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2365\/revisions\/2366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}