The use of antimicrobial compounds in food animal production provides demonstrated benefits, including improved animal health, higher production and, in some cases, reduction in food borne pathogens. Many food animals including poultry, swine and cattle are routinely treated with antibiotics in order to grow animals faster and to compensate for unsanitary conditions on many industrial farms.
However, use of antibiotics for agricultural purposes, particularly for growth enhancement, has come under much scrutiny, as it has been shown to contribute to the increased prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria of human significance. Recently, major increases in antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections in human populations have led to public health concerns regarding antibiotic use for non-therapeutic purposes (i.e., not used to treat disease) in animals destined for food production. Bacteria are able to develop antibiotic resistance when exposed to low doses of drugs over long periods of time. To promote growth and weight gain, entire herds or flocks of farm animals are routinely fed antibiotics at low levels in their feed or water—a practice that has been identified as a contributor to antibiotic resistance.
During the late 1990s, the same resistant strains of Campylobacter bacteria, one of the most common causes of diarrheal illnesses in humans, were discovered in chickens and people.
Both kinds of bacteria were resistant to fluoroquinolones, a class of antibiotics of important use in human medicine. Earlier in the 1980s, multi-drug resistant Salmonella infections in humans were linked to exposure to cattle on dairy farms. Rapidly growing, widespread emergence of resistance in Salmonella infections in humans resulted, which were sourced from food animals
Although the use of fluoroquinolones in poultry was banned, the vast array of antibiotics that are still used in food animals continue to pose a threat to human health. A joint report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) and the World Health Organization (WHO) found that the use of antibiotics in humans and animals places individuals at increased risk for infection, higher numbers of treatment failures and increased severity of illness. These impacts on human health can result in both higher frequency and longer duration of hospitalizations, raising the cost of health care.

For anyone that’s ever traveled internationally, my arrival experience will sound very familiar. My layover in Texas was long and I quickly realized the layout of Bush International was awful. When I finally flew into the airport in Merida, it was almost 11 a.m., and unlike the airport security in Grenada, the officers hardly glanced at my passport before yawning and waving me through.

Merida, in the Mexican Yucatan, is very hot during the summer. When I arrived, I was told that I had just missed the hottest month where by midnight, it was still over 100 degrees and 100 percent humidity. By late May, it was only 95 late at night; I quickly decided that the extra 1000 pesos a month for AC was completely worth it.

All of my living arrangement had been arranged by Dr. Dumonteil, who I’d met during orientation almost a year before. When he’d stood up with the other professors and told us that he did drug research in Chagas disease, my brain said yes!

For public health students the practicum, in some form, will be a familiar term. For every student some hands-on, practical experience in the field of public health is required. Students work in local state health offices, do research for professors in their department, or run off to other countries (sometimes through the Peace Corps) for a time determined by their department. For tropical medicine, I needed 200 hours, and decided a lab in Mexico researching novel drug treatments for a parasite sounded particularly awesome. Read More »

Several weeks past the World Health Summit (WHS) and, beyond reflection, attending youth representatives collaborated together on a letter to WHS organizers and participants. In this letter, we outline our appreciation for being able to attend the conference and suggestions that we have to make the Summit more comprehensive, more inclusive, and more decisive– in a word, more powerful.

Here is a link to the letter: http://mph.sgu.edu/mphblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/WHS-2011-Youth-Statement.pdf

After submitting the letter to WHS organizers, we received positive and very hopeful feedback: One organizer expressed enthusiastic support for our document, while others have expressed a desire to meet with our youth organizers in Germany.

At this point I’d like to thank everyone for following my blog posts, for being so interested in these issues and for supporting us from afar. I am happy to report that, although the future of global health initiatives is uncertain, the language of policy-making appears to be changing for the better. The country equivalent to an obese, rapidly-aging member of a self-help group, addicted to a fast lifestyle, cigarettes, red meat and far too many cheeseburgers, we’ve accomplished the first step toward progress– admitting we have a problem. May we not stop here, and continue to exemplify our ideals in our work so that health care improves for all people, everywhere.