Hospital-Associated Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) Bacteria (credit: NIAID)
WASHINGTON—The rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that trek between farms and clinics and across international boarders is unquestionably one of the most serious public health threats of our time. They currently sicken around two million people in the US each year, killing at least 23,000. To tackle the issue, the Obama Administration last year released a National Action Plan and established a panel of diverse experts to research and guide the government’s efforts to squash those deadly superbugs.
That 15-person panel, called the Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria or PACCARB, convened this week in Washington, DC to discuss and vote on its first progress report and key recommendations, which now head to the president’s desk. Thursday, the council unanimously voted for six recommendations, which spanned calls for funding and collaboration. But chief among them is the call for the president to establish a White House-level leader that could coordinate all of the government agencies’ efforts to fight drug resistance.
Such a leader would be critical, several panel members as well as panel chair Martin Blaser, told Ars. Currently, efforts to fight off drug resistant germs are scattered among several agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Agriculture, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Department of Defense, and several others—all of which have different priorities and budgets. The piece-meal approaches even made it difficult for the panel to assess what government agencies were up to and how they overlapped.
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