Why should policymakers care about antibiotic resistance and the lack of new antibiotics to treat resistant infections?
• Infections caused by resistant bacteria can strike anyone—the young and the old, the healthy and the chronically ill. Antibiotic resistance is a particularly serious problem for patients whose immune systems are compromised, such as people with HIV/AIDS and patients in critical care units. • About 2 million people acquire bacterial infections in U.S. hospitals each year, and 90,000 die as a result. About 70 percent of those infections are resistant to at least one drug. The trends toward increasing numbers of infection and increasing drug resistance show no sign of abating. • Resistant pathogens lead to higher health care costs because they often require more expensive drugs and extended hospital stays. The total cost to U.S. society is nearly $5 billion annually. • The pipeline of new antibiotics is drying up. Major pharmaceutical companies are losing interest in the antibiotics market because these drugs simply are not as profitable as drugs that treat chronic (long-term) condition
