One major US television network news broadcast and several major domestic and international newspapers as well as wire sources and consumer medical sites cover the release of a report from the World Health Organization warning that certain bacteria are not just becoming resistant to antibiotics, but are also found around the world. The report cautions that the 21st century is now in danger of becoming the “post-antibiotic era.”
NBC Nightly News (4/30, story 11, 2:45, Williams) reported, “The World Health Organization wants us all try to treat antibiotics as serious medicine, not to be taken lightly.” According to the WHO’s report, “antibiotics are actually threatening the achievement of modern medicine because of all the things they no longer kill and because of the rise of so-called super bugs that antibiotics cannot touch.”
USA Today (5/1, Painter) reports that the WHO “report focuses on several types of bacteria responsible for common, serious diseases such as bloodstream infections, diarrhea, pneumonia, urinary tract infections and gonorrhea.” Partly due to “antibiotic overuse and the dearth of new drugs, some bugs that were once easily curable now resist even the latest, most powerful antibiotics, the report says.” That is because bacteria “are always evolving even when the medicines are not.”
The AP (5/1, Cheng) reports that according to the WHO, “people should use antibiotics only when prescribed by a doctor, that they should complete the full prescription and never share antibiotics with others or use leftover prescriptions.”
Bloomberg News (5/1, Kitamura) reports that in a response to the WHO study, Jennifer Cohn, medical director at the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders, called for “a solid global plan of action which provides for the rational use of antibiotics so that quality-assured antibiotics reach those who need them, but are not overused or priced beyond reach.” In its report, the WHO concluded that “antimicrobial resistance is a global health security threat that requires cooperation among governments, especially on surveillance that generates reliable data to inform public health strategies.”
The Washington Post (5/1, Bernstein) “To Your Health” blog reports that last September, “the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned of ‘potentially catastrophic consequences’ of drug-resistant microorganisms, saying they now kill an estimated 23,000 people in this country every year.”
Also covering the story are the Wall Street Journal (5/1, Larano) “Southeast Asia Realtime” blog, Reuters (5/1, Kelland), the NBC News (5/1, Fox) website, the New York Daily News (5/1, Otis), TIME (5/1, Park), Medscape (5/1, Brown), and the CNN (4/30, Falco) “The Chart” blog.
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