Farm Antibiotics Linked to Human Deaths: CDCTuesday, 17 Sep 2013
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed a
connection between the routine use of antibiotics in livestock and a
growing bacterial resistance to antibiotics that kills at least
23,000 people a year.
The new report warns that antibiotic resistance is a serious threat to public health and undermines our ability to treat infectious diseases in general and infections acquired at healthcare facilities in particular. It notes that the overuse of antibiotics is the "single most important factor leading to antibiotic resistance around the world," and that part of the problem is the routine use of antibiotics in livestock.
Growing antibiotic resistance requires a multi-prong response, the
report says. Doctors should be more thoughtful in their use of
antibiotics, the routine use of antibiotics in healthy livestock
should be dramatically reduced, and hospitals should take more steps
to protect patients from dangerous superbugs, according to
Consumer's Union, a division of Consumer Reports.
"The widespread use and abuse of antibiotics is making these
critical medications less effective for treating infectious
diseases," said John
Santa, M.D., M.P.H., medical director of Consumer Reports
Health. "Failing to curb the unnecessary use of antibiotics will
result in catastrophic consequences for public health."
The CDC report notes that up to half of all antibiotics prescribed
by doctors each year are either given unnecessarily or used
improperly. Consumer Reports' Choosing Wisely campaign, a joint effort
with the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Foundation, is
working to reduce waste and harm in medical care, including the
overuse of antibiotics. As part of that effort, multiple medical
groups, including the American Academy of Family Physicians and the
American Academy of Pediatrics, have identified common conditions
for which antibiotics are overused. Those include problems such as
mild sinusitis, the common cold, and eye and ear infections.
Some 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the U.S. are used not on
humans but on animals -- mostly livestock that aren't sick.
Consumers Union believes that to preserve antibiotics for treatment
of disease in people, they should only be used on animals that are
sick. Consumers Union has long urged the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration and Congress to prohibit antibiotic use except for
treatment of sick animals.
In addition, Consumers Union has called on major supermarkets to address this public
health crisis by ending the sale in their stores of any
meat or poultry that comes from animals routinely fed antibiotics
for growth promotion or disease prevention--and is asking Trader
Joe's to lead the way.
"We shouldn't waste antibiotics to make animals grow faster or to
prevent disease," said Jean
Halloran, director of Food Policy Initiatives for Consumers
Union. "Humans don't take antibiotics to prevent disease and
neither should healthy farm animals."
The CDC's report estimates that 23,000 Americans die annually as a
direct result of antibiotic resistant infections and most of those
are due to health care-acquired infections.
Many more die from conditions that were complicated by such
infections. In addition, 250,000 are hospitalized with Clostridium
difficile (C. difficile) infections and 14,000
patients die from them. According to the CDC, the use of
antibiotics is a major contributing factor in these C. difficile infections.
"Most deaths from antibiotic resistant infections are from
infections picked up by patients while they are being treated in the
hospital or other health care settings," said Lisa
McGiffert, director of Consumers Union's Safe Patient Project
(www.safepatientproject.org).
"The majority of these infections could be prevented if hospitals
did a better job consistently following protocols proven to protect
patients from these deadly risks."
Consumers Union's Safe
Patient Project has been instrumental in getting states
to pass hospital infection reporting laws that eventually influenced
a national program reporting infections from most U.S. hospitals.
These reports have been key to stimulating prevention programs and
provide the tools for assessing whether progress is being made.
Studies show that simple prevention steps when care is provided in
the health care system can significantly reduce infection, including
strict hand washing, careful preparation of surgical sites, sterile
insertion of central lines, bladder catheters and other devices, as
well as only using them when needed and prompt removal when they are
not.
© 2013 NewsmaxHealth. All rights reserved. |