The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) has urged Congress to do more to tackle the public health crisis of antimicrobial resistance by promoting research and development of new antibiotics and diagnostics.

US President Barack Obama and his administration in a formal announcement from the White House proclaimed a host of September 18 actions to deal with the increasing threats of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which also includes an executive order titled "Combating Antibiotic Resistance" report.

This executive order comes from the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) along with a 20 million dollar prize to assist in the development of point-of-care diagnostic tests, in turn helping the medical practitioners to quickly detect highly resistant bacterial infections.

The announcement states that the strategy is a five year plan "for enhancing domestic and international capacity to prevent and contain outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant infections; maintain the efficacy of current and new antibiotics; and develop and deploy next-generation diagnostics, antibiotics, vaccines, and other therapeutics".

This announcement was based on the CDC's projection that antibiotic-resistant infections are behind 23,000 casualties and 2 million diseases every year in the US. This also leads to higher expenses going up to additional 20 billion dollar in direct health care costs and 35 billion dollars in lost productivity from hospital admissions and sick days.

The executive order mandates the federal departments as well as the agencies to bring into operation the national strategy as well as concentrate on the PCAST report.

The order involves establishment of a task force for fighting antibiotic-resistant bacteria with a directive mandating them to present a national action plan to the president outlining federal actions to execute the strategy and also see to the suggestions in the PCAST report.

The order also mandates the Food and Drug Administration for adopting measures to eradicate the agricultural application of medically significant antibiotics for enhanced growth.

The strategy focusses on five interconnected objective to be accomplished by the year 2020 which involve prohibiting the spread of resistant bacteria, quick detection and reporting of cases of antibiotic resistance, speed up the development and application of diagnostic tests of resistant bacteria, speed up with research and development for new antibiotics and other vaccines, make better the international collaboration capacities related to prevention of antibiotic resistance, surveillance and control.