Bipartisan effort to curb 'superbugs'

As an encouraging bipartisan note, Congressman Danny Davis of Chicago and my own congressman, Peter Roskam of Wheaton are at the forefront in Congress in addressing the critical shortage of antibiotics that can treat antibiotic-resistant infections known as "superbugs."

This critical shortage is very serious and has prompted alarm bells from our nation's best physicians and scientists, including those at the National institute of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC has identified antimicrobial resistance as the number one public health threat facing the United States. The CDC estimates more than two million Americans are diagnosed with an infection resistant to virtually all available treatments and 23,000 die as a result.

Building on Roskam's efforts, the House Energy & Commerce Committee just approved the revised 21st Century Cures Act. The Act includes portions of Roskam's and Davis's bipartisan Developing an Innovative Strategy for Antimicrobial Resistant Microorganisms (DISARM) Act, which takes a two-pronged approach to making private sector development of new antibiotics more attractive, beginning with changing the payment and delivery systems to make it desirable for companies to pursue new antibiotic treatments, and, equally important, a landmark cross-agency study to identify for removal obstacles to cost-effective medication deployment, thereby addressing both payment issues and significant process cost reductions.

I encourage readers to demand from their elected representatives bipartisan efforts like this to truly make a difference in American life. We must act together. It is simply unacceptable for good men to do nothing.

J. Bruce Synnott, III

Naperville