June 25, 2013
Today is the final day of the 4th World HAI Forum, a meeting that brought together over 70 international public health experts to discuss the urgent threat of bacterial resistance to antibiotics. The four-day program included discussions on topics ranging from successful antibiotic stewardship and infection prevention programs, to international strategies for combating resistance, to the connection between antibiotic use in food animals and the spread of resistance.
Below, CDDEP Director Ramanan Laxminarayan discusses a forum session on antibiotic use in animals:
The question of how the use of antibiotics in animals can affect humans is one that researchers are beginning to explore in more depth, Dr. Laxminaryan says. “There’s more and more evidence that this is a significant problem,” he says of the danger posed by unchecked antibiotic use in animals.
In recent years, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has moved to discourage the use of antibiotics in food animals, though some worry that without stricter regulations, agricultural antibiotic use could continue to promote resistance.
Biom rieux, a health diagnostics company that hosted the forum, recorded interviews with many other health experts – view them here.
