National Strategy And Action Plan For Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria

The discovery of antibiotics in the early 20th century fundamentally transformed human and veterinary medicine. Antibiotics now save millions of lives each year in the United States and around the world. The rise of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains, however, represents a serious threat to public health and the economy. If the effectiveness of antibiotics (drugs that kill or inhibit the growth of bacteria) is lost, we will no longer be able to reliably and rapidly treat bacterial infections, including bacterial pneumonias, foodborne illnesses, and healthcare-associated infections. As more strains of bacteria become resistant to an ever-larger number of antibiotics, our drug choices have become increasingly limited and more expensive and, in some cases, nonexistent. In a world with few effective antibiotics, modern medical advances such as surgery, transplants, and chemotherapy may no longer be viable due to the threat of infection. This book examines the national strategy and plan for combating antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

The National Strategy for Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria, published in 2014, sets out a plan for government work to mitigate the emergence and spread of resistant bacteria. Direction on the implementation of this strategy is provided in five-year national action plans, the first covering 2015 to 2020, and the second covering 2020 to 2025. Combating Antimicrobial Resistance and Protecting the Miracle of Modern Medicine evaluates progress made against the national strategy. This report discusses ways to improve detection of resistant infections and estimate the risk to human health from environmental sources of resistance. In addition, the report considers the effect of agricultural practices on human and animal health and animal welfare and ways these practices could be improved, and advises on key drugs and diseases for which animal-specific test breakpoints are needed.

The resistance topic is timely given current events. The emergence of mysterious new diseases, such as SARS, and the looming threat of bioterrorist attacks remind us of how vulnerable we can be to infectious agents. With advances in medical technologies, we have tamed many former microbial foes, yet with few new antimicrobial agents and vaccines in the pipeline, and rapidly increasing drug resistance among infectious microbes, we teeter on the brink of loosing the upperhand in our ongoing struggle against these foes, old and new. The Resistance Phenomenon in Microbes and Infectious Disease Vectors examines our understanding of the relationships among microbes, disease vectors, and human hosts, and explores possible new strategies for meeting the challenge of resistance.

"In May 2015, the Sixty-eighth World Health Assembly adopted the Global action plan on antimicrobial resistance, which reflects the global consensus that AMR poses a profound threat to human health. One of the five strategic objectives of the Global action plan is to strengthen the evidence base through enhanced global surveillance and research. The Global Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System (GLASS) has been developed to facilitate and encourage a standardized approach to AMR surveillance globally and in turn support the implementation of the Global action plan on antimicrobial resistance. This manual addresses the early phase of implementation of GLASS, focussing on surveillance of resistance in common human bacterial pathogens. The intended readership of this publication is public health professionals and health authorities responsible for national AMR surveillance. It outlines the GLASS standards and describes the road map for implementation of the system between 2015 and 2019. Further development of GLASS will be based on the lessons learnt during this period"--Publisher's description.

The discovery of antibiotics in the early 20th century fundamentally transformed human and veterinary medicine. Antibiotics now save millions of lives each year in the United States and around the world. The rise of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains, however, represents a serious threat to public health and the economy. The CDC estimates that annually at least two million illnesses and 23,000 deaths are caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the United States alone. As more strains of bacteria become resistant to an ever-larger number of antibiotics, our drug choices will become increasingly limited and expensive and, in some cases, nonexistent. If this trend continues unchecked, a wide range of modern medical procedures, from basic dental care to organ transplants, likely would be accompanied by a much greater risk of developing a difficult-to-treat or untreatable antibiotic infection. The safety of many modern medical procedures is dependent on the ability to treat bacterial infections that can arise as post-treatment complications.

Avoiding infection has always been expensive. Some human populations escaped tropical infections by migrating into cold climates but then had to procure fuel, warm clothing, durable housing, and crops from a short growing season. Waterborne infections were averted by owning your own well or supporting a community reservoir. Everyone got vaccines in rich countries, while people in others got them later if at all. Antimicrobial agents seemed at first to be an exception. They did not need to be delivered through a cold chain and to everyone, as vaccines did. They had to be given only to infected patients and often then as relatively cheap injectables or pills off a shelf for only a few days to get astonishing cures. Antimicrobials not only were better than most other innovations but also reached more of the world’s people sooner. The problem appeared later. After each new antimicrobial became widely used, genes expressing resistance to it began to emerge and spread through bacterial populations. Patients infected with bacteria expressing such resistance genes then failed treatment and remained infected or died. Growing resistance to antimicrobial agents began to take away more and more of the cures that the agents had brought.

An accessible overview of the challenges in tackling AMR, and the economic and policy responses of the 'One Health' approach. It will appeal to policy-makers seeking to strengthen national and local polices tackling AMR, as well as students and academics who want an overview of the latest scientific evidence regarding effective AMR policies.