Medical professionals from across the country are sounding the alarm about antibiotic resistance and the need to reduce antibiotic use in human health care and food animal production.
Around 23,000 Americans die from antibiotic-resistant infections each year and thousands more succumb to longer, riskier, and more expensive hospital stays. Nov. 12 through 18 is Antibiotic Awareness Week. The week is part of CDC’s efforts to improve antibiotic prescribing and use among health care facilities, physicians, and farms.
The U.S. livestock industry consumes medically important antibiotics almost twice as intensively as the industries in 30 European countries, according to analysis by the National Resources Defence Council. However, thanks to consumer demand and health care professionals’ recommendations, efforts to reduce the use of these critical medicines are underway with opportunities for growth in the U.S. turkey, pig, and beef industries.
Practice Greenhealth member hospitals average more than 30 percent of their meat and poultry purchases raised without antibiotics.
Members and allies of the Clinical Champions for Comprehensive Antibiotic Stewardship (CCCAS) a joint committee of Health Care Without Harm, the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society and the Sharing Antimicrobial Reports for Pediatric Stewardship group, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, have published op-eds in local publications.
- Dr. Sameer Patel, Lurie Children’s Hospital
- Dr. Sujit Suchindran, Lahey Hospital and Deirdre Cummings, MASSPIRG Education Fund
- William Fritch, registered nurse and student at Johns Hopkins University
The U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a CCCAS Steering Committee member, released a video featuring clinician voices speakng out about the misuse and overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture.