In early September, President Obama addressed the problem of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. He set guidelines and incentives for patients and manufacturers. Obama’s regulations “include establishing surveillance systems for tracking the spread of antibiotic-resistant infections in health-care and agricultural settings, providing financial and regulatory incentives for researchers and pharmaceutical companies to develop new antibiotics and devising methods to quickly diagnose antibiotic-resistant infections” (Reardon). He is going as far as a implementing a task force to carry out the new regulations. The White House seems to understand the severity of what might happen if the global population became infected with a bacteria that cannot be stopped.
http://www.greenberg-art.com
An interesting way to get people to do something is to make it competitive or at the very least add an incentive. Obama has done this! However, it is not a contest between patients, but rather scientists, to find a rapid test for distinguishing resistant bacteria from nonresistant bacteria. This will increase the speed at which something like this is developed and minimize the risk of antibiotic resistant bacteria becoming a greater issue.
Interesting post; I've never heard about the government discussing guidelines for antibiotic-resistant bacteria. You mentioned some of the regulations that President Obama has started to enact, but does the US government have a specific plan to combat a global pandemic? If you could include further details on that, that would be fascinating to read about.
ReplyDeleteAlso, do you think that products, such as hand sanitizer, should be limited? A lot of times, the sanitizer doesn't kill all of the germs because some of them are resistant to the chemicals. Those organisms are then free to reproduce more than ever and spread.