The United States released its five-year National Action Plan for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria, which will be led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to a press release.
Among the goals in the plan, which covers years 2020-2025:
• Expand the CDC’s AR Lab Network internationally, which was established in U.S. health departments in 2016 to identify new and emerging threats. Since launch, it has performed more than 100,000 AR lab tests and sequenced more than 100,000 AR samples.
• Support infection prevention and control to decrease healthcare-associated antibiotic-resistant infections 20 percent by 2025. From 2012 to 2017, the number of antibiotic-resistant infections seen in hospitals dropped 27 percent and the number of deaths from antibiotic-resistant infections fell nearly 30 percent.
• Assist local responses across the nation to decrease community-acquired antibiotic-resistant infections 10 percent by 2025. The CDC has supported more than 500 local AR experts since 2016 and reported an 18 percent decrease overall in deaths from AR since the 2013 AR Threats Report.
• Foster diagnostic, antibiotic, vaccine, and other novel innovations by funding hundreds of new projects, establishing “learning laboratories” to develop or test cost-effective solutions to contain urgent resistant pathogens globally, and build a vaccine data platform to make new vaccines available faster to help prevent infections.
• Work with global partners and low- and middle-income countries to prevent human and animal infections.
• Collect antibiotic use data from 100 percent of U.S. acute care and 50 percent of critical access hospitals to help improve antibiotic use and drive action to reduce outpatient antibiotic prescribing. Antibiotic prescribing in outpatient settings declined 5 percent from 2011 to 2016.
• Double the CDC’s investments in state and local health departments. Since 2016, the CDC has provided $373 million across every state to improve AR detection, response, and prevention.
