If You Think Ebola Was Bad ... 'Antibiotic Resistance', is Potentially Far Worse

"It's all hands on deck, 24/7, for Ebola," one prominent federal health official told me during the hysteria, but "we're ignoring antibiotic resistance."

Yet, each year, more than 5 million people in the U.S. and Europe become infected with serious, resistant bacterial infections across the globe, with at least 48,000 of those people dying as a direct result of these infections, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Globally, the bacteria responsible are growing increasingly resistant to these treatments. And more than 2 million children, mostly in the undeveloped world, die each year of bacterial pneumonia alone.

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As drug-resistant bacteria proliferate, without increased action a nightmare scenario will emerge. Physicians will become increasingly unable to safely administer treatments as basic as chemotherapy and dialysis, much less perform standard surgical procedures. Pneumonia could spread unchecked. Medical care will revert to the pre-antibiotic 1920s. The death rate worldwide from otherwise manageable infections will skyrocket, to Ebola-like dimensions, with bloodstream infection rates expected to run higher than 50 percent.

As drug-resistant bacteria proliferate, without increased action a nightmare scenario will emerge. Physicians will become increasingly unable to safely administer treatments as basic as chemotherapy and dialysis, much less perform standard surgical procedures. Pneumonia could spread unchecked. Medical care will revert to the pre-antibiotic 1920s. The death rate worldwide from otherwise manageable infections will skyrocket, to Ebola-like dimensions, with bloodstream infection rates expected to run higher than 50 percent.

International policy makers can no longer ignore this public health crisis. We've known about this fast-growing hazard for some time now. I testified no fewer than three times before the U.S. Congress to deliver ever-escalating warnings about the dangers of antibiotic resistance, first back in 2008, then again in 2010, and most recently in 2012. In my first appearance before the U.S. Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, the title of my statement—"Emergence of the Superbug: Antimicrobial Resistance in the U.S."—left no doubt we faced a serious problem.

We must implement effective measures to combat antimicrobial resistance. The years since have amply confirmed that the risks to public health at home and abroad are severe, and, equally troubling, that the shortcomings of our medical preparedness and our therapeutic options are growing worse.

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