Weekly Digest: Tyson Foods to stop dosing chickens with antibiotics important in human medicine

Poultry giant Tyson Foods announced that it will eliminate medically important antibiotics from its U.S. chicken products by 2017. The company is the largest chicken producer in the United States, and stated that it is also investigating reduction of antibiotics on its cattle, hog and turkey farms. CDDEP Director Ramanan Laxminarayan was interviewed for an article in Voice of America on the topic, and said that the announcement “sends a very strong signal that it is possible to produce chicken at large scale without using antibiotics that are medically important in humans.” [Tyson Foods, Voice of America]

Five billion people in the world don’t have access to safe and affordable surgery, according to a report from the Lancet Commission for Global Surgery. The study found that 9 of 10 people in low- and lower-middle-income countries cannot access basic surgical care, and 33 million individuals face catastrophic health expenses each year from out-of-pocket payment for surgery. The Commission’s report supports the findings of the recently released Disease Control Priorities, 3rd edition (DCP3) volume, Essential Surgery. A chapter co-authored by CDDEP Director Ramanan Laxminarayan and Fellow Arindam Nandi concluded that a variety of basic surgical interventions are cost-effective in low- and middle-income countries. [The Lancet, DCP3]

Three-quarters of countries don’t have a comprehensive national plan to fight antibiotic resistance. A World Health Organization report published this week compiled the results of a survey from 133 countries and found that only 34 had such a plan. Other deficiencies included a lack of monitoring and surveillance, inadequate standard treatment guidelines, low public awareness and few programs to address hospital-acquired infections. [WHO]

Rubella has been declared eradicated from North and South America. The viral disease, also known as German measles, can lead to serious birth defects after infection during pregnancy and affected 20,000 children annually in the United States before the vaccine was licensed in 1969. Officials say complete eradication took 15 years and 250 million people vaccinated; the last endemic cases of rubella were recorded in Brazil and Argentina in 2009. [BBC, WHO]

ReAct, an organization that works on addressing global antibiotic resistance, launched its Toolbox for Action on Antibiotic Resistance this week. The Toolbox aims to educate the global public on the growing threat of antibiotic resistance and provide information on best practices for combating resistance, including surveillance, rational use, infection control and policy solutions. [ReAct]

Locally sourced drugs may be a viable option for treating multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in Pakistan.  Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine compared the efficacy of international quality assured (IQA) drugs and locally procured drugs for MDR-TB used in the same hospitals over the same time period in Pakistan. They found no difference in outcomes between the treatment groups. [PLOS ONE]

Duke researchers modeled a new method of using beta-lactam antibiotics that could extend use of the first-line drugs. A computer model found that some bacteria normally considered resistant to the beta-lactam class of antibiotics are sensitive to drugs for a short period of time before enzyme beta-lactamase degrades the drug. The study’s authors say that precisely timed antibiotic dosing and frequency that targets such bacteria could clear infections without needing to use last-resort antibiotics. [PLOS Computational Biology, Duke University]

Nanoscale “knobs” cause red blood cells infected with malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum to stiffen and impede blood flow. This mechanism, described in a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, stops the normally flexible cells from traveling through narrow blood vessels—which causes many of the life-endangering symptoms of malaria. Researchers say that identification of the mechanism could help to develop targeted antimalarial therapies. [PNAS]

More than 1,500 people have contracted bacterial meningitis in Niger. An outbreak of meningococcal meningitis, a vaccine-preventable bacterial infection, has so far killed 143 in the country. Health officials in Niger decided to close some schools and begin a vaccination campaign last week to help combat spread of the bacteria. [Outbreak News Today, Reuters]

A survey of nearly 400 U.S. hospitals found that half lack programs to strictly limit antibiotic use. The results of the survey, reported in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, indicated that though almost all the randomly selected hospitals had strategies to curb Clostridium difficile infections, many did not involve antimicrobial stewardship or testing for C. difficile in patients who have been taking antibiotics for several months. [Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology]