Antibiotic Resistance is Hurting our Children (and,the rest of us, too)

American kids are being hurt and killed by the spread of antibiotic-resistant "superbugs," pediatricians said Monday.

 "The rise of antibiotic resistance is a global crisis. It's one of the greatest threats to health today,"  WHO director-general Dr. Margaret Chan said in a news conference Monday.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that more than two million people are infected by drug-resistant germs each year, and 23,000 die of their infections.

The causes are clear — people taking antibiotics for infections they cannot help; people failing to take a full course of antibiotics; natural mutation and evolution; and the widespread use of antibiotics to fatten up farm animals. 

Even though the FDA has been trying to educate farmers about the dangers of the use of antibiotics in farm animals:

"Approximately 80 percent of the overall tonnage of antimicrobial agents sold in the United States in 2012 was for animal use, and approximately 60 percent of those agents are considered important for human medicine," the committee wrote in the group's journal, Pediatrics.  When healthy animals are dosed with low levels of antibiotics, drug-resistant germs grow in their bodies.

In March, the White House released a five-year, $1.2 billion plan to fight drug-resistant germs that includes better tracking of infections, faster tests and new drugs. (That's what we all need, more drugs!)

But people need to do more as individuals, WHO's Dr. Keiji Fukuda said. WHO surveyed 10,000 people from 12 countries about antibiotic resistance and found an alarming number just don't understand what it means or what can be done about it. 

Fukuda said 76 percent of those surveyed thought the term antibiotic resistance meant people were resistant, not the germs infecting them. Nearly two thirds wrongly believe that antibiotics work to help viral infections such as colds and flu - they don't.

So, here's our choice:  continue to purchase low quality, conventionally-raised meat with lots of antibiotics in it, or wake up and demand that we want a better choice for our children (and ourselves)....it's called,  "voting with the purse."  The decision is up to all of us. You can start by purchasing a Thanksgiving turkey that doesn't contain antibiotics.

Dr. Esther
drkollars@gmail.com
fixdhealthcare.com