One year ago, CDC issued a landmark report sounding the alarm on the top drug-resistant threats to human health. The announcement this morning of the President’s Executive Order and the National Strategy to Combat Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria marks the administration’s response to one of the most urgent health threats facing us today – antibiotic resistance. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria – germs that don’t respond to the drugs designed to kill them – threaten to return us to the time when simple infections were often fatal. Today, antibiotic-resistant bacteria annually cause a minimum of 2 million illnesses and 23,000 deaths in the United States.
Detecting, preventing and controlling antibiotic resistance requires a coordinated effort. To support the National Strategy for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria, CDC is working to address the threat in these four areas:
1.Slow the development of resistant bacteria and prevent the spread of resistant infections.
2.Strengthen national one-health surveillance efforts to combat resistance.
3.Advance development and use of rapid and innovative diagnostic tests for identification and characterization of resistant bacteria.
4.Improve international collaboration and capacities for antibiotic resistance prevention, surveillance, control and antibiotic research and development.
These important plans are part of CDC's request for $30 million for CDC's Detect and Protect Initiative and $14 million for the National Healthcare Safety Network to combat resistant bacteria. These strategies and the funds needed to implement them are a down-payment to improve our country’s ability to start tackling our biggest drug-resistant threats.
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