To address these risks, the White House announced a series of actions by President Barack Obama and his administration including an executive order, a new national strategy and a report from the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).
The executive order directs federal departments and agencies to implement the national strategy. The strategy is a five-year plan for enhancing domestic and international capacity to the prevention and containment of outbreaks, maintaining the efficacy of current and new antibiotics and developing and deploying next-generation diagnostics, antibiotics, vaccines and other therapeutics.
According to CDC, detecting, preventing and controlling antibiotic resistance requires a coordinated effort. To support the national strategy and combat antibiotic resistance, the agency is working to address the threat in these four areas:
- Preventing infections: Avoiding infections initially reduces the amount of antibiotics that have to be used and reduces the likelihood that resistance will develop during treatment.
- Tracking: CDC gathers data on antibiotic-resistant infections, causes of infections and whether there are particular reasons (risk factors) that caused some people to get a resistant infection.
- Improving antibiotic use: One of the most important actions needed to greatly slow the development and spread of antibiotic-resistant infections is to change the way antibiotics are used.
- Drug fevelopment: Antibiotic resistance occurs as part of a natural process in which bacteria evolve, new antibiotics will always be needed to keep up with resistant bacteria as well as new diagnostic tests to track the development of resistance.