August 08, 2013
This week, a blog run by Fast Company called Co.Exist, which focuses on “world-changing ideas and information,” posted a writeup on a concept that is central to CDDEP’s Extending the Cure (ETC) project: antibiotic effectiveness should be treated as a finite natural resource.
Pointing to a recent analysis published in BMJ on the cost of resistance and the UK government’s warning on the “catastrophic threat” – both of which closely followed the CDC’s March report on the rise of carbapenam-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) – the article highlights the urgency of the resistance problem and the complex solutions needed to combat it. “The three keys are discouraging doctors from over-prescribing antibiotics, prodding pharmaceutical companies to release new drugs, and reducing overall demand to slow the evolution of new resistant strains,” the author states.
For more information and data on the spread of resistance in the US and globally, see CDDEP’s ResistanceMap.
Watch ETC’s animated video on antibiotic resistance below:
Staph bacteria image via BASF/Flickr
