The White House released an ambitious five-year plan to significantly reduce drug-resistant infections in an effort some critics already say is toothless.
The plan released Friday doesn’t contain many new regulations for hospitals or doctors offices. But it does take aim at the two largest contributors to the development of antibiotic resistance in humans: overprescribing of antibiotics and the use of antibiotics to help grow livestock.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates resistant infections kill about 23,000 people a year and sicken 2 million.
The administration wants to curb the use of antibiotics in livestock, but the plan will rely on a voluntary guidance from the Food and Drug Administration.
The guidance goes into effect next year and asks farmers and ranchers to stop using antibiotics for livestock growth. It also would require veterinary oversight for using antibiotics to treat or prevent illnesses in livestock.
As antibiotics are used in an animal, they can develop a resistance to it. Those resistant microbes can transfer to humans after they eat improperly cooked meat.
The FDA should evaluate the progress of the guidance and whether it is actually curbing antibiotic use, the plan says.
The Natural Resource Defense Council slammed the administration for not going further.
“The plan continues to allow the routine feeding of antibiotics to animals that live in the crowded conditions endemic to industrial farms,” said Mae Wu, health attorney for the council. “Our government should be taking steps to reduce antibiotics to protect our health rather than protecting poor industry practices.”
Pew Charitable Trusts, however, applauded the plan.
“This administration has taken important first steps towards phasing out the use of antibiotics to promote growth in livestock,” said Allan Coukell, senior director for health programs at Pew. “We call now for a clear plan to review the safety of antibiotic use for disease prevention in food animals.”
The administration offers more concrete requirements to deal with overprescribing of antibiotics.
Within three years, every hospital that wants to participate in Medicare or Medicaid will have to create an antibiotic stewardship program that oversees how antibiotics are prescribed and used on patients.
In addition, health facilities operated by the U.S. government must put in a stewardship program by 2018.
The federal government also will issue guidance to doctors, ambulatory surgical centers, nursing homes, dialysis centers and other medical settings.
The goal is to stop doctors from prescribing unnecessary antibiotics. The more antibiotics a person uses the more likely he is to develop resistance, experts say.
The White House also intends to speed up research of new antibiotics and develop new tests so doctors can determine the correct antibiotic for a patient.
