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World Antibiotic Awareness Week

screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-9-00-23-amThis came across my newsfeed this morning:  Antibiotics: Handle with Care. This is the World Health Organization’s (WHO) media campaign theme as they launch World Antibiotic Awareness Week. You might ask yourself, why must we be aware? Antibiotics are those pills that I get a prescription for when I’m feeling ill, right? What do I need to know?

A little bit of background

Antibiotics were discovered almost 100 years ago and have been used to do amazing things for the last 70 years, such as treating and curing bad bacterial infections like pneumonia, tuberculosis, blood poisoning, syphilis, and gonorrhea. But, over the last 30 years, we’ve seen that these infections are becoming harder to treat, and the ‘usual suspects’ of reliable antibiotics no longer work. The pesky but brilliant bacteria are mutating and developing resistance to antibiotics.

From the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website: Each year in the United States, at least 2 million people become infected with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics and at least 23,000 people die each year as a direct result of these infections

From the Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H.: “Antibiotics are lifesaving drugs, and if we continue down the road of inappropriate use we’ll lose the most powerful tool we have to fight life-threatening infections. Losing these antibiotics would undermine our ability to treat patients with deadly infections, cancer, provide organ transplants, and save victims of burns and trauma.”

Pretty scary, eh? I don’t know about you, but I want these types of medications to be effective if I have severe food poisoning, or my kid has strep throat, or if my elderly neighbor acquires a staph infection while at the hospital.

So, what do I need to know about this?

Just for fun, here’s a quiz.

Per the WHO and the CDC, some of the causes for emerging antibiotic resistance include:

  • Source: https://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/about.html
    Source: https://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/about.html

    Doctors prescribing antibiotics when they are not needed. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that 1/3 to 1/2 of antibiotic use in humans is unnecessary or inappropriate. Antibiotics don’t work for viruses, like a cold or the flu.

  • Patients not finishing the full course of treatment when the pills are prescribed. All types of microbes have the ability to develop resistance to the drugs created to destroy them, becoming drug-resistant organisms. Unless you finish all your pills and kill all the bugs, they have the potential to mutate. You can then pass these resistant bugs on to another person.
  • Excessive use of antibiotics in livestock and fish-farming. Antibiotics help keep animals healthy, too, but just like in humans, they can be overused. In fact, in some cases, antibiotics are not only used to keep food animals healthy, but also to promote growth. However, just as resistant bacteria can pass between humans, it can also pass from animals to humans.
  • Poor sanitation and infection control practices. Dirty hands, dirty food preparation counters, and dirty floors that may have remnants of animal waste on them spread germs… especially if you touch something and then put your hands on your face. Remember, washing hands with soap and water goes a long way!

And, what can we do about this? 

The WHO has a prescription (no pun intended) for action. Hopefully you can find a way to play your part.

  • Medical (human and animal) providers shouldn’t prescribe antibiotics unless they are truly necessary. Antibiotics only work for a bacterial infection.
  • People who are sick should ask their provider if they really need to take them, and if yes, always take the full prescription. When you don’t finish the pills, the bacteria inside you can already start to become resistant. Take a look at CDC’s handy chart:
Source: https://www.cdc.gov/features/getsmart/
Source: https://www.cdc.gov/features/getsmart/

Let’s hope that with WHO’s call to action, CDC’s leadership, and so many others’ commitment, we’ll be able to work together and get back ahead of this curve!


This article was written by Gen Meredith, MPH, OTR, Associate Director for International Programs and the Master of Public Health.