A landmark report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) gives the first snapshot of the toll and threat antibiotic-resistance poses to US health. The report ranks each threat and proposes four core actions to tackle the growing problem.
Antibiotic-resistance occurs when an infection does not respond to the drug developed to treat it because the germs have since changed in ways that make them immune to it.
Every year, more than two million Americans get infections that are resistant to antibiotics and more than 23,000 die as a result.
As well as taking a considerable toll on health and life, antibiotic resistance is a huge economic burden for a health system that is already strained.
Studies suggest antibiotic resistance is responsible for some $20 billion direct health care costs and another $35 billion a year in lost productivity.
Community prevalence of drug-resistant bacteria
Once rare outside of hospitals, antibiotic-resistant infections are now increasingly arising in the community.
CDC Director Tom Frieden said in a news conference on Monday:
"Antibiotic resistance is rising for many different pathogens that are threats to health. If we don't act now, our medicine cabinet will be empty and we won't have the antibiotics we need to save lives."
Steve Solomon, director of the Office of Antimicrobial Resistance at the CDC adds:
"These drugs are a precious, limited resource - the more we use antibiotics today, the less likely we are to have effective antibiotics tomorrow."
The public health agency says the single biggest cause of antibiotic resistance is use of antibiotics, and up to half of all antibiotics prescribed for patients are either unnecessary or prescribed inappropriately.
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