New CDC report on superbugs is full of bad news
I and others have posted about this very serious issue before. The way things are going, you will be in serious jeopardy of dying from bacterial infections that do not respond to our antibiotics.
***The U.S. and the world continue to lose ground against antibiotic resistance, according to a new report out this week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And among other things, the number of superbugs that pose a dire threat to the health of Americans has only gotten larger in the past half decade.
In 2013, the CDC issued a first of its kind report on antibiotic resistant infections in the U.S. It provided a conservative estimate of how often these infections sicken and kill Americans every year, as well as listed off a rogues gallery’s of resistant fungi and bacteria that were becoming common problems. These microbes were ranked by threat level, from concerning to urgent. Back then, the CDC estimated that more than 2 million people in the U.S. contracted these infections annually, while at least 23,000 died as a result.
By 2019, the situation has only gotten worse. The CDC’s latest estimates are that nearly 3 million people get infected by superbugs annually, while 35,900 die. And not only is the overall health impact of these infections growing, so are the dangerous pathogens that cause them.
There’s no immediate future where antibiotics stop working for all infections. But our lives and those of our loved ones will change for the worse long before we reach that point. Everything from giving birth to receiving a life-saving transplant depends on antibiotics to keep people safe. Without any significant advances against antibiotic resistance in the years to come, more of us will needlessly suffer and die.