U.S. unveils five-year plan to fight superbugs

The U.S. government on Friday released a five-year plan that outlines steps such as significantly reducing unnecessary antibiotic use to combat the growing threat of resistance to antibiotics.

Antibiotics have saved the lives of millions of people around the world since the discovery of penicillin in 1928. Unfortunately, overuse and misuse of these bacteria-fighting drugs is helping to create drug-resistant bacteria, also known as superbugs.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that superbugs cause 23,000 deaths and 2 million illnesses each year in the United States. Antibiotic resistance also threatens animal health, agriculture, and the economy.

In an interview with health news website WebMD, President Barack Obama called antibiotic resistance "one of the most pressing public health issues facing the world today."

"We've come up with a comprehensive plan to fight it," Obama said. "It addresses the problem from multiple angles at once."

Under the White House plan, inappropriate antibiotic use will be required to reduce by 50 percent in outpatient settings and by 20 percent in inpatient settings by 2020. All 50 states in the United States must establish state-level programs to monitor regionally important multi-drug resistant organisms.

The plan also seeks to eliminate the use of medically-important antibiotics for growth promotion in food-producing animals.

Measures also include creating a system to provide real-time data about antibiotic resistance to doctors and hospitals nationwide and developing next-generation diagnostics, antibiotics, vaccines, and other therapeutics.

Obama called for improved international coordination of efforts to combat antibiotic resistance, such as developing a global database on the use of antibacterial agents in animals and strengthening regulatory and supply chain systems in low- and middle-income countries.

"(We are) working with partners worldwide to make sure that while we're fighting drug resistance here in the United States, it isn't gaining ground somewhere else in the world," he noted.

In September 2014, Obama signed an executive order launching efforts to address the antibiotic-resistance crisis. Earlier this year, he asked Congress in his 2016 budget to nearly double its funding to 1.2 billion U.S. dollars to combat superbugs. Endite