Tuesday (13th November) marked the start of Get Smart About Antibiotics Week in the United States, where concerns over misuse of antibiotics, growing resistance to antibiotics in microbes and industry resistance to effective regulation could be creating "the perfect storm" according to some food safety experts.

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Sunday (18th November) will be Antibiotics Awareness Day in the EU, where the Danish government has attempted to push through a Europe-wide tightening of antibiotics regulation in line with its own domestic standards. Danish surveillance experts believe such a move will help combat antibiotic resistance, avoiding health risks to humans and animals.   

The European day is being organised by the European Centre for Disease Control and aims to raise awareness of antibiotic misuse and threats to the medicines' efficacy amongst consumers and policy makers.

The United States' awareness week is organised by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Efforts to regulate common antibiotics, which are still used to promote growth in a variety of animals in the US, have been opposed by the powerful pharmaceutical lobby. However, in January this year the US Food and Drug Administration announced it would take action to curtail the use of Cephalosporins in agriculture. 

To mark the week, the US CDC released a statement co-signed by 24 other medical organisations which make a commitment to push for greater understanding of antibiotic resistance and curbs on overuse and misuse of the vital medicines. This includes "limiting the use of medically important human antibiotics in food animals; supporting the use of such antibiotics in animals only for those uses that are considered necessary for assuring animal health; and having veterinary oversight for such antibiotics used in animals."

The US government-backed awareness week is also being supported by the Consumers Union, which has its own Meat Without Drugs campaign, and the National Institute for Animal Agriculture, an animal agriculture organisation that has pledged to "begin the dialogue to a one health approach to antimicrobial use and resistance" along Danish lines.   

The 'one health' approach sees human, animal and environmental health as interconnected and aims to shape more cohesive policies to help deal with these interrelated issues.

However, despite the groundswell of support for measures from consumers, medical experts and members of the agriculture industry, a resolution to the overuse of antibiotics may yet be a long way off. Although the FDA has announced it is aiming to phase out the prophylactic use of antibiotics for growth promotion in animals over the next three years, the government agency has meekly committed itself to a voluntary, industry-run initiative.

The prospect of a world in which antibiotics lose their effectiveness is grim indeed. As Dr Margaret Chan, Director General of the World Health Organisation has said, "Things as common as strep throat or a child’s scratched knee could once again kill. ... A post-antibiotic era means, in effect, an end to modern medicine as we know it."

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