Director's Briefing - Serious health threat of antibiotic - Resistant germs
Tip: Highlight text to annotate itX
CDC works 24/7 to save lives and protect people.
We're releasing a report on antibiotic resistance
in the U.S.
This report shows that many bacteria are really
making dangerous advances against antibiotics.
We look at bacteria that have the biggest impact
on human life.
These include CRE.
I've called CRE a nightmare bacteria.
It can resist all antibiotics, kill a high proportion
of people it infects, and spread from person-to-person
and bacteria-to-bacteria readily.
Antibiotic resistance is one
of the most serious health threats we face today.
We risk entering a post-antibiotic era
where even simple infections can be deadly.
With a few bacteria, we're already there.
But we're sounding this alarm because,
as serious as the threat is, if we take quick,
aggressive action, we can stop it.
Sometime back, when I first joined CDC,
we documented an epidemic
of multidrug resistant tuberculosis.
We worked with patients, outreach workers, doctors,
and community leaders, and we were able to end that epidemic.
More recently, CDC worked with Florida
to stop a year-long CRE outbreak
in a long-term acute care hospital.
We were able to help them reduce the percentage of patients
who got CRE from 44 percent to zero.
There are four things we have to do to protect antibiotics.
First, prevent infections and the spread
of drug-resistant bacteria.
Second, use antibiotics much more responsibly.
Third, track resistance patterns.
And fourth, develop new drugs.
With real commitment on the part of everyone
who uses antibiotics-doctors, patients,
and those in the agriculture industry-we can stop the threat
of antibiotic resistance.
