So picture this. You're a veterinarian and you have a client that has sick calves
on their farm, and the calves are actually dying and this is something
that is very unusual, and one of the things you find out is that the germ
that's causing the calves to get sick is resistant to most of the antibiotics
that you would use to actually treat these infections. Imagine across town
there's a human doctor and they're seeing sick kids who are hospitalized with this
exact same germ and the drugs that they might try and use to treat the infection
in the kids aren't working. In this outbreak of Salmonella Heidelberg what
we started to see is that children who worked with cattle and these were kids
who participated in 4H events or other types of agricultural activities were
getting sick with this really severe strain of Salmonella and when I say it
was severe, I mean a lot of these kids were hospitalized. When we see antibiotic
resistance in an outbreak, it usually means three things; the first is that the
infection can be more severe, the second is that the antibiotics we normally use
to treat these infections might not work and the third is that these people might
be hospitalized for a longer amount of time. One of the things we saw in this
outbreak was that people and animals were getting sick with this particular
strain of Salmonella. The antibiotics that we usually use to treat this
infection were not effective against this germ. This germ had multi-drug
resistance or was resistant to many of the first-line antibiotics
that we would use to treat infections in both people and animals. That's why it's
so important for us to use antibiotics judiciously and carefully to make sure
that we preserve the power of antibiotics to treat infections in
people and in animals when it's most needed. As a producer anytime your
animals are sick you can work with your veterinarian to find out a little bit
more about what's going on, and those in the agriculture community should get to
know their state public health veterinarian. Everyone has a role to play
in keeping animals and people healthy and safe including veterinarians
producers and those in the animal industry.