Get Smart About Antibiotics week

was last week. "...an annual observance in which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its medical and public health partners try to raise awareness of antibiotic resistance."

Wired: Antibiotic Awareness Week article


The EU recently passed a resolution, not the same thing as a law, decrying antibiotic use to promote growth in livestock.

Wired: European Union Antibiotic resolution


And just in time, a new drug-resistant superbug is making life interesting in European hospitals. "Klebsiella pneumoniae is a common cause of pneumonia, urinary tract, and bloodstream infections in hospital patients. The superbug form is resistant even to a class of medicines called carbapenems, the most powerful known antibiotics, which are usually reserved by doctors as a last line of defense. The ECDC said several EU member states were now reporting that between 15 and up to 50 percent of K. pneumoniae from bloodstream infections were resistant to carbapenems. To a large extent, antibiotic resistance is driven by the misuse and overuse of antibiotics, which encourages bacteria to develop new ways of overcoming them. Experts say primary care doctors are partly to blame for prescribing antibiotics for patients who demand them unnecessarily, and hospitals are also guilty of overuse."

Slashdot: European superbug