Contagion Live reports that the US Food and Drug Administration declared war on antimicrobial resistance last week, announcing a comprehensive plan to combat arguably the biggest public health challenge facing the country.
By now, of course, everyone working within the field of infectious diseases knows the much-discussed figures provided by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those numbers suggest that some 2 million Americans fall ill annually as a result of infections caused by antimicrobial-resistant pathogens; an estimated 23,000 of them die.
FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, is hardly sanguine about reducing these numbers in the short-term, but he believes he and his colleagues within the FDA understand the best pathway forward.
And we all know how previous “wars on” have worked, recalling wars on poverty, drugs and most recently the media. Let’s hope this “war” has some successes!
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