President Obama has called on federal agencies to significantly accelerate their efforts in dealing with the problem of increasing antibiotic resistance that's making treatment of many medical conditions more and more difficult.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria annually cause at least two million illnesses and 23,000 deaths in the country, according to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"And those are conservative estimates," CDC director Tom Frieden says.
The administration has announced its intention to formulate a national, 5-year strategy to deal with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which it said "represents a serious threat to public health and the economy."
Its goals include reducing the incidence of Clostridium difficile or C-diff infections by half by 2020 and a similar 50 percent reduction of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections in that period.
The administration has also called for the creation of a new advisory council, the Task Force for Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria, to make concrete recommendation for implementing the 5-year National Action Plan to the White House by February of 2015.
The task force would be co-chaired by the secretaries of the departments of Human Health Services, Defense and Agriculture, it said.
The pharmaceutical industry has been hesitant to make the investments necessary to develop new antibiotics that will quickly become less effective the more they're utilized, experts say.
That was one area addressed in a recent report released the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, which included a number of recommendations aimed at encouraging the industry to make research commitments.
"There are 'push' mechanisms -- like partnerships with government -- [that] make co-founding [new drugs] attractive," said council co-chairman Eric S. Lander. "There are also 'pull' recommendations -- successful development will involve some reward, such as higher reimbursements, for instance."
Such actions would be just one part of a "strategic, coordinated, and sustained effort" intended to detect, prevent and control the rise of antibiotic resistance, the White House said.
It called for the cooperation of industry, academia, healthcare providers and the general public in that effort.
The science and technology advisory council noted that antibiotic resistance is happening at "an alarming rate," faster than the development countermeasures can keep up.
Effective antibiotics are crucial for the success of many modern medical procedures, including organ transplants, kidney dialysis and cancer chemotherapy, it pointed out.
Such procedures will see significant increases in their risks with the continued rise in bacterial resistance, it said, citing a World Health Organization warming that the world risks entering a "post-antibiotic" era unless quick action is taken.
