Today, just days after a CDC report on a pan-resistant K. pneumoniae isolate, there is no mention of antibiotic resistance on the White House website as pointed out by Maryn McKenna, a journalist specialising in public health.
If you believe that antibiotic resistance does represent a serious public health threat and that controlling it requires strategy, coordination and effort then this is worrying. We can be sure that the forces creating resistant bacteria are not going to ease up that any reduction in our efforts to control antibiotic resistance will directly affect patients.
Antibiotic resistance has never been more of a threat. As good as modern medicine becomes, it has the potential to be overshadowed by patients succumbing to once treatable infections. This is a step in the wrong direction and as researchers, we have more of a responsibility that ever to communicate the facts about antibiotic resistance to prevent a bad situation from spiralling out of control.