November 15, 2011
CDC’s annual Get Smart About Antibiotics week has arrived and the agency has kicked it off by announcing a pilot program to track antibiotic use in hospitals. The mechanism works through the National Healthcare Safety Network and will initially target 70 hospitals through four health departments.
The threat of untreatable infections is real, says Arjun Srinivasan, M.D., who heads CDC’s Get Smart for Healthcare program. Although previously unthinkable, the day when antibiotics don’t work in all situations is upon us. We are already seeing germs that are stronger than any antibiotics we have to treat them, including some infections in health care settings.
Understanding antibiotic prescribing patterns provides a foundation for guidelines and policies to curtail inappropriate antibiotic use. The press release about the new surveillance program was issued just in advance of today’s gathering of the Interagency Task Force on Antimicrobial Resistance (ITFAR), a meeting of federal agencies that overlap with the antibiotic resistance issue. For more background on ITFAR, check out this Extending the Cure policy brief.
Read the CDC press release, and stay tuned this week for more Get Smart resources.
