November 17, 2017
U.S. Antibiotic Awareness Week (USAAW) is an annual observance highlighting the importance of being Antibiotics Aware and the steps everyone can take to improve antibiotic use or prescribing. Improving the way healthcare professionals prescribe antibiotics, and the way we take antibiotics, helps keep us healthy now, helps fight antibiotics resistance, and ensures that these life-saving drugs will be available for future generations. CDC encourages healthcare professionals, patients, and families to learn more about antibiotic prescribing and use.
When antibiotics aren’t needed, they won’t help you, and the side effects could still hurt you.
Here are seven facts you should know to Be Antibiotics Aware:
Did you know antibiotic resistance is one of the most urgent threats to the public’s health? Any time antibiotics are used, they can cause side effects and lead to antibiotic resistance. Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria no longer respond to the drugs designed to kill them. Common side effects of antibiotics can include rash, dizziness, nausea, diarrhea, and yeast infections. More serious side effects include Clostridium difficile infection (also called C. difficile or C. diff), which causes diarrhea that can lead to severe colon damage and death. People can also have severe and life-threatening allergic reactions.
To learn more about antibiotic prescribing and use, visit www.cdc.gov/antibiotic-use.