President Obama will ask Congress to double the funding to fight antibiotic resistance, the White House said Tuesday, calling on lawmakers to approve $1.2 billion to treat increasingly deadly infections.
Drug-resistant bacteria kills 23,000 people in the United States each year and causes 2 million illnesses annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
With the growing overreliance on antibiotics, health experts warn that the problem is getting worse and say previously routine diseases could become lethal without a new batch of medicine.
“The funding will improve antibiotic stewardship; strengthen antibiotic resistance risk assessment, surveillance, and reporting capabilities; and drive research innovation in the human health and agricultural sectors,” the White House said Tuesday.
Long prescribed by doctors as a fix for a variety of maladies, antibiotics have been relied on too heavily, both through personal use and in the nation’s food supply, causing bacteria to evolve to the point of resisting them.
Antibiotic-resistant strains of tuberculosis, malaria and some sexually transmitted diseases now exist. Experts also fear that gonorrhea could become untreatable.
However, drug manufacturers have shown fading interest in developing new antibiotics, preferring to focus on chronic problems such as cholesterol, diabetes and arthritis. Such drugs require far less testing and are seen as more profitable.
The White House says the funding will go towards the development of rapid testing, needed to speed the recognition of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, education efforts to warn of the dangers of overusing antibiotics — especially in the agriculture sector — and the production of new drugs.
Obama will unveil his budget for next fiscal year on Feb. 2.
