How often do you take antibiotics?
January 12, 2010
It’s been years since I’ve taken antibiotics. And I hope I can continue to avoid them.
It’s important to discuss with your health care provider options to antibiotics for treatments of non-life threatening illnesses such as colds and the flu.
The overuse of antibiotics is causing a number of infections – malaria, strep, AIDS, and tuberculosis, for example – to mutate into much more aggressive forms that are drug resistant.
The first case of the extremely drug-resistant (XXDR) tuberculosis in the United States has been diagnosed. A 19-year-old student from Peru, who came here to study English, was treated at Florida hospitals at a cost of $500,000. He survived the ordeal, in which a golf-sized hole in his lung was reduced to a white scar. Doctors experimented on him with drugs, including some not usually used to treat tuberculosis.
See the Miami Herald article "Infectious Diseases Mutating at an Alarming Rate" for more information.
In the U.S., drug-resistant infections killed more than 65,000 people last year – more than prostate and breast cancer combined, the article reports. More than 19,000 died from staph infection.
In Norway, infections have been eliminated by stringently limiting the use of antibiotics and the use of infection control measures.
Norway’s aggressive infection reduction programs have made it the most infection-free country in the world.
In addition to limiting the use of antibiotics, Norway:
- Isolates patients with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA and health care providers with the infection stay home.
- Tracks each case of MRSA by its individual strain and interviews patients about where they’ve been and who they’ve been with, testing anyone who has been in contact with them.
American hospitals that are using these procedures are reducing their infection rates, reports the Miami Herald’s "Norway Conquers Infections by Cutting Use of Antibiotics."
Take a look at these two articles to learn more about these superbugs and what you can do to protect yourself and your loved ones.
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