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 The 60-page report is the first ever to tackle antibiotic resistance
so broadly. It was compiled by a government task force led by the
administration's top officials for health, agriculture and defense.
A White House official confirmed that it would release the plan on
Friday.
Doctors and health experts have warned for decades that rising rates
of resistant bacteria are leading to tens of thousands of deaths,
threatening to nullify modern medical advancements.
The goals include drastically reducing the rates of the most deadly
"superbug" infections within five years, investing in new diagnostic
tools and antibiotic drugs, and improving antibiotic use. Other
tactics include surveillance and prescribing practices in livestock
and hospitals and increasing international collaboration through
foreign ministries of health and the World Health Organization.
A broad-based approach is necessary, experts said, because overuse
of antibiotics from hospitals to U.S. farms has created a problem
that has quickly grown out of control. In January, the Obama
administration proposed doubling the government's investment in
antibiotic resistance to $1.2 billion.
"We've never seen something this sweeping and comprehensive," Amanda
Jezek, vice president for public policy and government relations at
the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said in an interview
with Reuters. IDSA has testified before Congress for years to pass
laws and increase funding for antibiotic resistance, she added.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 2
million people are infected with resistant bacteria each year and
23,000 die, which experts say is a conservative estimate.
Under the plan, the CDC will aim to reduce rates of the most deadly
and widespread infections. That includes cutting Clostridium
difficile infections by 50 percent, reducing carbapenem-resistant
Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) infections by 60 percent and lowering
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bloodstream
infections by at least 50 percent.
Hospitals will be required to implement programs to increase
infection controls, such as judiciously washing hands, hospital
surfaces and equipment, and reducing the use of antibiotics in
patients.
Doctors working with the government's Medicare and Medicaid health
plans will be required to report their prescribing patterns for
antibiotics, particularly when used to treat non-bacterial
infections, such as common colds.
The plan calls for CDC to increase its screening of people arriving
from countries with high rates of multidrug resistant tuberculosis.
The CDC currently screens 500,000 such arrivals per year, and the
plan calls for doubling that within five years.
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Up to 70 percent of antibiotics sold in the United States are given
to livestock and poultry, said Sujatha Jahagirdar, program director
at consumer group U.S. PIRG Stop Antibiotics Overuse.
Jahagirdar noted that the report's recommendations fall short of
policies adopted by companies such as Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc,
which seeks to buy completely antibiotic-free meats. McDonald's Corp
recently announced plans to phase out purchases of chicken raised
with antibiotics vital to fighting human infections.
The plan recommends that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and
Department of Agriculture take further steps to curtail the use of
medically important classes of antibiotics for growth promotion in
animals raised for human consumption. It did not set a specific goal
or say how the agencies will be held accountable.
"President Obama gets an A for tackling this problem from multiple
angles," said Jahagirdar. "But in terms of addressing the biggest
problem, the troubling overuse and misuse of antibiotics on large
factory farms, the administration gets an incomplete."
The government hopes to help put two new antibiotic drugs on the
shelves and fund development of a diagnostic tool that would quickly
tell doctors whether patients have a bacterial or viral infection,
which would improve prescribing.
Because few new antibiotics have been developed in the past decade,
hospitals have increasingly been forced to use colistin, a toxic
antibiotic approved for use in the 1950s, as a drug of last resort.
"This kicks everything up to another level," said Jezek of the
Infectious Diseases Society of America, "which, given the severity
of the threat, is absolutely necessary."
(Additional reporting by P.J. Huffstutter in Chicago and Sharon
Begley in New York; Editing by Michele Gershberg, Lisa Shumaker and
Diane Craft)
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