Pathogens are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics. The CDC, IDSA and the WHO all have a common goal to combat antimicrobial resistance. Sara Al-Farhan/MEDILL
The World Health Organization celebrated World Health Day on April 7th with a specific health-related cause. The organization chose combating antimicrobial resistance as the theme for this year and launched a worldwide campaign to raise awareness about the issue.
In the United States, the Center for Disease Control and the Infectious Diseases Society of America have been engaged in the antimicrobial resistance dialogue for years and are welcoming the WHO’s decision to dedicate this year to this specific cause. The IDSA in particular sees antimicrobial resistance as a threat to national security.
As part of the campaign, WHO introduced a six-point policy on antimicrobial resistance in an effort to involve governments in the process of combating the problem. In a nutshell, the policy encourages countries to:
- Commit to a comprehensive, financed national plan
- Strengthen surveillance and lab capacity
- Ensure access to essential medicine
- Regulate and promote rational use of essential medicine
- Enhance infection prevention and control
- Foster innovation and research
“We were very gratified when we saw the WHO document,” said Jean Patel, deputy director for the CDC’s office of antimicrobial resistance. “Their policy items in the plan are consistent with our action plan.”
The CDC recently released an updated public health action plan to combat antimicrobial resistance here in America. Unlike the WHO’s policy package, Patel said that the CDC’s already existing plan is being put into action, whereas the policy package is a more like a list of guidelines that countries around the world can choose to follow.
“The WHO package has some very high reaching ideas,” she said. “Our plan is designed for action and has been in development since the inception of the CDC.”
The plan is implemented with the combined effort of different federal agencies. The Department of Defense is one of many agencies that recognize antimicrobial resistance as a threat to public health.
From a national security perspective, it is the IDSA that has been pushing for the government to be more involved in the issue.
In 2004, the IDSA published a comprehensive report, “Bad Bugs, No Drugs,” revealing that pandemics resulting from antimicrobial resistance is a real threat that could appear naturally, or even worse, synthetically. Bioterrorism doesn’t only entail the spread of man-made pathogens, but also from making commonly treatable pathogens resistant to antibiotics.
“Antibiotic resistance not only threatens public health, but may have national and global security implications as well. Virtually all of the antibiotic-resistant pathogens that exist naturally today can be bio-engineered through forced mutation or cloning,” the report says.
According to data in the report, about 2 million Americans acquire bacterial infections every year, and 90,000 die as a result. About 70 percent of those infections are resistant to at least one drug. Also, resistant pathogens require higher healthcare costs, costing the U.S. nearly $5 billion annually.
In February, the IDSA’s James M. Hughes published an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association commenting on the state of U.S. policy makers’ awareness of the issue. He says that new antibiotics must be manufactured in order to combat the problem, but there is a lack of funding from the government for new research. Also, pharmaceutical companies do not make sustainable profits off of antibiotics alone to invest in research.
“The prospect of developing new antibiotics that offer meaningful benefits over existing drugs is currently bleak because the development pipeline is limited,” he said. “[Antibiotics] work so well and so fast—most are prescribed for only 7 to 14 days—they are simply not as profitable as drugs used to treat chronic conditions or lifestyle issues.”
The IDSA recently published policy recommendations that resonate some of the WHO’s priorities, mainly stressing that there should be more federal accountability in addressing the issue. The recent developments and combined efforts from the IDSA, CDC, and WHO, could lead the world in successfully planning ahead for a possible devastating pandemic that could emerge from antimicrobial resistance.
