If improvements aren’t made to prevent drug-resistant superbugs, 37,000 people will die over the next five years, according to new government estimates.
The estimate released Tuesday in a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention note that a coordinated effort between hospitals and health departments could help prevent a lot of the antibiotic-resistant infections.
Drug-resistant superbugs that no longer respond to the drugs designed to kill them are responsible for at least 23,000 U.S. deaths a year, the CDC said.
The agency focuses on one particularly common infection called Clostridium difficile, which kills about 15,000 people a year.
The CDC said to prevent the infections, healthcare facilities and health departments should work together.
Public health departments need to track and alert hospitals to drug-resistant germ outbreaks in their area and the threat of germs coming from other facilities, the report said.
Healthcare facilities, in turn, should work with the departments on infection-control actions to prevent the spread of the superbugs, the agency said. For instance, one improvement is creating a system to alert hospitals when transferring a patient who has a drug-resistant germ.
The data in the report came from both mathematical modeling and analysis estimates from CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network and Emerging Infections Program.
