Hospitals such as St. Joseph’s Health in Syracuse are taking notice of the growing antibiotics resistance across the country.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, antibiotics resistance is at the highest it’s ever been. As resistance grows to dangerous levels, people are more vulnerable to infections so, especially those in hospital or nursing home care who all are already susceptible.
St .Joseph’s medical director of infectious disease tells NewsChannel 9 battling antibiotics resistance has been happening since they were first created. Dr. Helen Jacoby says the overuse of antibiotics is why the resistance is steadily growing.
Jacoby recommends avoiding antibiotics when possible. For example, people fighting the common cold or viral bronchitis should avoid using antibiotics because they won’t help in those cases. Instead, Jacoby recommends treating basic symptoms with over-the-counter medications, getting plenty of rest and giving yourself time to recover.
“It’s a societal problem to some degree because people have gotten the idea, why not take an antibiotic just in case? They’ve been looked at as somewhat harmless,” Jacoby explained. “What we’ve come to realize over time is that antibiotic use is not harmless…that every time we expose bacteria to antibiotics we give them a chance to learn to become resistant.”>
The CDC’s most recent data for staph bacteria’s resistance to antibiotics reveals that New York state is at a level of 46.9 percent. Some states have a resistance upward to nearly 70 percent.
To view the CDC’s full map of current data for antibiotics resistance connected to staph bacteria, click here.
