In a new op-ed for Media Planet/USA Today, AMR Action Fund CEO Henry Skinner wrote about drug-resistant infections are a growing threat to rural Americans, who face a uniquely dangerous combination of structural barriers, workforce shortages, and limited access to new treatments that puts.
He wrote:
Nearly 80% of U.S. counties have no infectious disease physician. Two-thirds of federally designated primary care shortage areas are rural. Many hospitals lack laboratory staff and pharmacists, forcing generalist providers to prescribe older, broad-spectrum antibiotics while they wait for test results from distant labs.
The consequences fall heaviest on vulnerable patient populations. Children in rural counties are more likely to be prescribed antibiotics inappropriately. Mothers face higher infection risks during pregnancy and delivery, at a time when more than half of rural counties no longer have obstetric care providers. Farmworkers, slaughterhouse employees, and families living near industrial livestock operations face occupational and environmental exposures that drive resistant infections into the community...
Strengthening the rural health workforce and modernizing antimicrobial innovation are not partisan issues. They are national imperatives, and policymakers must act accordingly.
Read the full op-ed here.
