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Do you know what's not awesome? Antibiotic-resistant germs. That's our first topic today and it's one that international health officials are very concerned about. By germs or bugs, we're talking about bacteria and fungi.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control, a government health protection agency, released a new report this week that says there are now five so-called superbugs that posed an urgent threat to humans. The last time the CDC released a report like this, they were only three germs listed in that category. The problem is that certain bacteria and fungi are getting good at surviving even when antibiotics are given for an infection.
ELIZABETH COHEN, cnn SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Antibiotics are one of the miracles of modern medicine. They have saved countless lives. But there's another side to them.
The bacteria that live in our body, they've learned how to outwit many of our most powerful antibiotics. These drug resistant bacteria are called superbugs.
Every year, these superbugs infect more than 2 million people in the United States and kill at least 23,000.
Here's how a bug becomes a superbug. When you take in antibiotic, there could be some bacteria that know how to resist that antibiotic. Well, those smart bacteria, they're the ones that survived your round of antibiotics and they flourish. And that's when you get a proliferation of superbugs.
And the more that we as a community take antibiotics, the more chances the bacteria have to become resistant to them.
AZUZ: So, in the words of the latest CDC report, "some miracle drugs no longer perform miracles."
It did come with some good news. The Centers for Disease Control says the number of deaths and infections caused by germs that resist antibiotics is decreasing. It dropped 18 percent between 2013 and now. And the number of infections caught in hospitals is down.
The bad news, according to the CDC, is that there’re still too many germs that resist antibiotics, and that they can be caught anywhere in the community.
What can be done about this? The report says the answer isn't in developing more powerful antibiotics, but in using them less often. The CDC estimates that as many as one-third of the antibiotic prescriptions given in emergency rooms and doctor's offices aren't needed. But it doesn't entirely blame doctors for this. It says it can be hard for them to tell when someone has a bacterial infection, which antibiotics could be good for, or a viral one, which they're not.
Medical officials also say that if you're prescribed an antibiotic, you should take all of it, even after you start feeling better, because not finishing your prescription could allow any remaining bacteria to learn how to resist antibiotics.
