CDC Year in Review: “Mission: Critical”
The 10 most challenging public-health threats of 2014
It’s been an unprecedented year for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as America’s public health agency continues its emergency response to the most complex Ebola epidemic in history. Ebola, however, is far from the only critical mission CDC undertook in 2014.
- CDC has made important progress against antibiotic resistance, but it remains a serious threat. Combatting antibiotic resistance and preventing healthcare-associated infections remains a critical initiative for 2015. “Every day we don’t act to better protect antibiotics will make it harder and more expensive to address drug resistance in the future,” said Beth P. Bell, M.D., M.P.H., director of CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. “Drug resistance can undermine both our ability to fight infectious diseases and much of modern medicine.”
- If antibiotic resistance is such a public threat.. why aren’t community Pharmacists wanting to see ICD9 codes for Rxs for antibiotics and/or sensitivity culture tests to make sure the most appropriate antibiotic is being prescribed ?
Mission: Continued Fight against Infectious Diseases:
Mission: Laboratory Safety
Mission: Leading Causes of Death
- Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the United States, killing more than 480,000 Americans each year. In 2014, CDC continued its national tobacco education campaign — Tips from Former Smokers — with hard-hitting new ads featuring secondary health conditions people may not realize are related to smoking. “These new ads are powerful. They highlight illnesses and suffering caused by smoking that people don’t commonly associate with cigarette use,” Dr. Frieden said. “Smokers have told us these ads help them quit by showing what it’s like to live every day with disability and disfigurement from smoking.”
- If we are having over 1300 people dying DAILY from tobacco use… it is considered a PREVENTABLE death and we have not classified this as a epidemic ? Apparently the 230 people that die DAILY from use/abuse of ALCOHOL is not yet a epidemic ?
- A silent epidemic of fatal overdose kills 44 people every day in the US. In 2014 CDC joined with partners to improve prescription monitoring, reducing unnecessary prescriptions. “Prescription drug overdose is epidemic in the United States,” Dr. Frieden said. “All too often, and in far too many communities, the treatment is becoming the problem. States where prescribing rates are highest need to take a particularly hard look at ways to reduce the inappropriate prescription of these drugs that are dangerous when misused or abused.”
- Those 44 people dying every day from abusing some substances – other than alcohol and tobacco – aren’t they making the same choice as those using/abusing the drug ALCOHOL or the drug NICOTINE ? And they are part of a EPIDEMIC ?
Link: http://www.cdc.gov/media/dpk/2014/dpk-eoy.html
Filed under: General Problems
We know what a true epidemic is.
Ebola.
We know what subway line and bowling alley the Ebola doctor in New York used.
If we wanted, we could trace, track, ensnare, arrest and convict the so called diverters. Why haven’t we?
Perhaps they are not diverting?
Perhaps there is no epidemic at all?
Perhaps the emperor has no clothes?
Perhaps pharmacists doth protest too much?
Research says that diversion mainly happens between two people, one handing pills to another. Between friends, family members, co-workers. But even so, if large amounts were being distributed, they would have to originate from somewhere. And while the DEA has a lot of control over every drug, they don’t have as much control over every pharmacy. (Yet.)
Definition of epidemic: a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time.
Drug abuse is not an infectious disease, and has never reached epidemic levels. But white people are all up in arms because the drugs their kids are using and abusing have changed from prescription medications (legal) into harder, illegal drugs, like heroin. That’s a social stigma that won’t be tolerated in the white population.
And of course these drugs can be fatal — just like alcohol and cigarettes. But abuse of heroin and prescription drugs works a lot faster than abuse of alcohol and cigarettes.
Be careful what you wish for Steve. The pharmacists will be doing that soon enough.
I declined to fill the paperwork on a prior auth for halcion today.
Halcyon.
It’s not enbrel.
It’s just halcyon.