President Barack Obama will propose in his upcoming budget a doubling of the amount of federal funding allocated to combating antibiotic-resistant bacteria, White House officials said Tuesday.
As part of his annual budget request set to be released next week, the president will ask Congress for the $1.2 billion to help fund research and treatment efforts associated with the antibiotic-resistance problem, reported The Washington Post.
Antibiotic-resistance causes an estimated two million illnesses and 23,000 deaths annually in the United States.
"Antibiotic resistance limits our ability to quickly and reliably treat bacterial infections, and the rise of resistance could hamper our ability to perform a range of modern medical procedures from joint replacements to organ transplants, the safety of which depends on our ability to treat bacterial infections that can arise as post-surgical complications," the White House said in a statement, reported The Hill.
Included in the budget request will be $650 million for the National Institutes of Health to research new antibiotics and conduct a large scale study to better understand drug resistance. Some $280 million will be allocated for the Centers for Disease Control, which aims to improve efforts to monitor outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, according to The Hill.
The money will in part help fund the deployment of advanced tests capable of rapidly identifying drug-resistant bacteria, which will enhance infection control, according to The White House, who said it will also help hospitals better collaborate to prevent the spread of antibiotic-resistant superbugs.
An additional $47 million would go to the Food and Drug Administration, and $77 million to the Department of Agriculture, which would allow the agency to develop new antibiotics for farm animals. The Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs would split $160 million and focus on antibiotic-resistance in hospitals that treat troops and veterans, reported The Hill.
The CDC has warned of the growing antibiotic-resistance problem, which makes drugs less effective against infectious diseases, noting that as many as half of all prescribed antibiotic are either unnecessary or used inappropriately.
If the trend continues, the CDC said some infections could become practically untreatable, reported The Washington Post.
Commonplace surgeries such as knee replacements could become much riskier as antibiotics grow less effective at fighting infections.
In India, an antibiotic-resistant epidemic is increasingly affecting newborns born with bacterial infections that are resistant to most known antibiotics. A recent study found that 58,000 newborns died last year as a result of infections not treatable by antibioitics - something Indian doctors say wasn't a problem just five years ago, reported The New York Times.
A recent report commissioned by the British Government estimated that antibiotic-resistance could soon be the cause of 10 million deaths per year - more than cancer - and could cost the world up to $100 trillion in reduced gross national product.
