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Antibiotic Resistance Threatens Public Health
Doctors depend on antibiotics to treat illnesses caused by bacteria, from pneumonia to meningitis and other life-threatening infections. The effectiveness of many antibiotics has begun to wane, the legacy of decades of unnecessary overuse in both human medicine and agriculture.

Keep Antibiotics Working is a coalition of health, consumer, agricultural, environmental, humane and other advocacy groups with more than eleven million members dedicated to eliminating a major cause of antibiotic resistance: the inappropriate use of antibiotics in food animals.

For a general overview of the issue, see the Campaign's fact sheets: Antibiotic Resistance - An Emerging Public Health Crisis (an annotated version is also available) and Antibiotic Resistance and Animal Agriculture.

PBS story on antibiotic resistance

Share Your Experience

If you or a family member has been ill with an antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection, please fill out the KAW Share Your Experience form. Your information will be completely confidential. Please keep in mind that we are unable to provide medical treatment or expertise to you at this time.

* Take Action!
Act now to keep antibiotics working today!

* February 10, 2012

Watch Dr. David Wallinga, a key member of KAW, give a talk entitled "Raising Pigs & Problems: Saying No to Antibiotics in Animal Feed" as part of TedX Manhattan.

* January 12, 2012

Read KAW's recent letter to the editor in the New York Times.

* January 6, 2012

Today, the FDA banned the extralabel use of cephalosporin antibiotics in food animals. Read our press release on this public healthy victory.

* December 22, 2011

FDA withdrew longstanding proposals to remove approvals for two antibiotics, penicillins and tetracyclines, used in livestock feed. Read our press release on this major step backward by the Agency.

* November 14, 2011

FDA denied an important citizens' petition that would address antibiotic overuse on farm. KAW is disappointed by FDA's failure to protect public health. Read our letter to FDA.

* November 4, 2011

KAW questions the FDA's downward revision of its estimate of annual drug use in a recent press release. To see the differences between the two reports, read the original and the revised versions.

* September 14, 2011

New government report finds that FDA and other US agencies are not doing enough to address the antibiotic resistance crisis. Read KAW's press release for more information.

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