US officials challenge world to fight antibiotic resistance

US health officials plan to lead an urgent international initiative to fight antibiotic resistance as a global superbug crisis looms closer, the CDC announced Wednesday.

Antibiotic resistance is becoming an increasingly pressing global public health concern as cases have nearly doubled since 2002, according to some estimates. 

As common bacteria and fungi ‘learn’ how they need to change to survive, our widespread, life-saving antibiotic drugs are being rendered ineffective. 

The US Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Alex Azar, is planning to call on international leaders to fight harder and faster against antibiotic resistance during the UN General Assembly on Tuesday September 25. 

Department of Health and Human Services Alex Azar(pictured) will call for a global fight against antibiotic resistance during the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, the CDC says (file)

Less than 100 years ago, bacterial and fungal infections were often a death sentence. 

Since the invention of antibiotics in 1928, the same illnesses are more commonly an inconvenience than a mortal threat. 

But that’s changing, and quickly. 

Just like us, germs ‘learn’ from their mistakes. As antibiotics have become widespread, bugs have mutated and evolved to be immune to our drugs.

The more germs are exposed to antibiotics, the faster the process of natural selection happens, so that the strains that are vulnerable to drugs die off and the stronger ones multiply, gradually becoming a larger and larger proportion of the germ population. 

Already, 23,000 Americans die of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections each year.  

Those deaths only account for a little more than 15 percent of the two million total people who get infected with one of these resilient bugs, but can still be cured with other antibiotics. 

Epidemiologists and infectious disease expert have been warning that antibiotic resistance truly could be a threat to human existence for years. 

But antibiotics are so commodified, their use is so ubiquitous, and the development of new such drugs takes so long that nothing short of a concerted global effort will slow the spread of resistant bacteria. 

And that is exactly what Secretary Azar intends to call for before the UN on Tuesday.  

Many experts have blamed physicians for over-prescribing antibiotics.

WHAT IS ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE?

Antibiotics have been doled out unnecessarily by GPs and hospital staff for decades, fueling once harmless bacteria to become superbugs. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) has previously warned if nothing is done the world is heading for a ‘post-antibiotic’ era.

It claimed common infections, such as chlamydia, will become killers without immediate solutions to the growing crisis.

Bacteria can become drug resistant when people take incorrect doses of antibiotics or if they are given out unnecessarily. 

Chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies claimed in 2016 that the threat of antibiotic resistance is as severe as terrorism.

Figures estimate that superbugs will kill 10 million people each year by 2050, with patients succumbing to once harmless bugs.

Around 700,000 people already die yearly due to drug-resistant infections including tuberculosis (TB), HIV and malaria across the world. 

Concerns have repeatedly been raised that medicine will be taken back to the ‘dark ages’ if antibiotics are rendered ineffective in the coming years.

In addition to existing drugs becoming less effective, there have only been one or two new antibiotics developed in the last 30 years.

In September, the WHO warned antibiotics are ‘running out’ as a report found a ‘serious lack’ of new drugs in the development pipeline.

Without antibiotics, C-sections, cancer treatments and hip replacements will become incredibly ‘risky’, it was said at the time.

And this is certainly a major driver of resistance, and perhaps even the primary one, as some studies have suggested. 

But doctors aren’t the only ones feeding us antibiotics. 

About 70 percent of all antibiotics in the US are fed to livestock (as of 2017) that then feed Americans – and people anywhere that we export meat.

And on the same day that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced the US’s plan to call for global action against antibiotic resistance, the agency also published a report on domesticated animals and resistance in people. 

Specifically, a three-year investigation found that at least 100 people contracted antibiotic-resistant campylobacter jejuni infections from puppies. 

It was probably humans’ faults in the first place, as pet store owners often give young animals prophylactic antibiotics before selling them – despite warnings against the practice from the World Health Organization. 

It is in the immediate and obvious interest of livestock and pet retailers and even doctors to try to prevent infection instead of fighting it after onset. 

But a more widespread, urgent and global awareness of the long-term and dire risks of this practice is essential to stopping it – and antibiotic resistance, experts say. 

‘A pledge to this initiative means escalating government, civil society, and private industry efforts to save lives from antibiotic resistance – one of the world’s greatest public health threats,’ the CDC said in a statement. 

This must be accomplished through a global pus for ‘developing new vaccines and drugs, and improving use of and access to current antibiotics; by improving infection prevention and control; by reducing antibiotic resistance in the environment, like water and soil; and by sharing data to stay ahead of antibiotic-resistant germs.’

Alongside Secretary Azar, CDC Director Redfield, Director-General of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Secretary of the Indian Department of Health and Research and Anand Anandkumar of Bugworks will unveil the finer points of their plan in a talk moderated by journalist Madlen Davies on Tuesday at the General Assembly in New York City.

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk