Antibiotic Resistance: What Can Be Done About This Threat to Public Health?

Antibiotic resistance is one of the most serious public health threats of our era. It occurs when disease-causing bacteria evolve mechanisms to fight back against the drugs we use to kill them. It’s a consequence of widespread antibiotic use, but the problem just gets worse when antibiotics are used indiscriminately, especially in livestock, without a doctor’s prescription or to treat viral infections that can’t be killed by antibiotics.

Hard-to-treat, drug-resistant bacterial infections are already a fact of life. Without proper action from policymakers, health care providers and the general public, the day could soon come when antibiotic drugs will no longer work at all. When you enroll in an online program to earn your Master of Public Health, you need to be aware of the severity of this issue — because you will be one of the professionals tasked with resolving it.

What Causes Antibiotic Resistance?

Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria change in a way that allows them to resist the effects of antibiotic drugs. Generally these changes allow the bacteria to neutralize the effects of the drugs through the secretion of an enzyme. Drug-resistant bacteria continue to multiply unthwarted, worsening the infection and the harm to the patient and threatening others with contagion.

Some degree of antibiotic resistance would evolve among bacteria even if antibiotic drugs were always used prudently. Bacteria can mutate quickly on the genetic level, becoming resistant to antibiotic drugs; if a single mutated bacterium manages to survive an antibiotic onslaught, it can multiply, producing many more of its own kind. Those drug-resistant bacteria can spread to other patients, but health care providers would struggle to treat the infections without adequate antibiotic medications.

While drug-resistant bacteria would naturally evolve even with only prudent and proper antibiotic use, the problem worsens when antibiotics are used too often and for the wrong reasons. Whenever someone takes antibiotics without first consulting a doctor, or a doctor prescribes antibiotics to treat a viral infection, it contributes to worsening antibiotic resistance. The use of antibiotics in livestock also contributes to antibiotic resistance. Even the use of antibacterial soaps and cleaners in the home worsens the problem of antibiotic resistance.

How Can We Fight Antibiotic Resistance?

While the world’s policymakers have a great degree of power in the fight against antibiotic resistance, this is a war that will need to be won at home. All members of the public, in the United States and around the world, should learn to use antibiotics properly. As a private citizen, you can do your part to fight antibiotic resistance by only using antibiotic drugs when you have a bacterial infection; see a doctor and get a diagnosis before taking antibiotics, take them as directed, and discard any leftover medication. Do not share your antibiotics or save any for the next time you’re sick. Avoid using antibacterial soaps or cleaners in your home — for home use, regular soap is fine. Health care providers can fight antibiotic resistance by making sure they’re prescribing them in the correct dosage only when they’re needed.

As a future policymaker or administrator, you can help lead the charge against drug-resistant bacteria by encouraging antibiotic stewardship policies to promote safe and responsible use of antibiotics in hospitals, clinics and long-term care facilities. Administrators of health care facilities should concentrate on educating patients about the problem of antibiotic resistance and reducing unnecessary use of these drugs. Administrators can encourage resistance trends tracking in their facilities.

On the government level, you can help end the use of antibiotics in livestock and help secure funding for research into new antibiotic drugs that are effective against drug-resistant bacteria. Scientists are already working on modifying existing drugs as well as developing new drugs that can treat drug-resistant strains of bacteria, but since new strains of drug-resistant bacteria will always emerge, this problem is ongoing.

Antibiotic resistance is a huge threat to public health, but with careful management of antibiotic use, we can hope to control the problem at least long enough for scientists to develop new, more powerful antibiotic drugs. In the meantime, your Master of Public Health program will prepare you to find solutions for this and other threats to public health, now and in the future.

Antibiotic Resistance: What Can Be Done About This Threat to Public Health? 2017-01-23T19:05:00-08:00 Rating: 4.5 Diposkan Oleh: edumaximal