For desperately ill patients with serious, life-threatening antibiotic-resistant infections, access to new antibiotics is a matter of life and death.

All across America, people are dying from bacterial infections that we used to be able to cure with antibiotics.

Just this March, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned the public about a four-fold increase in one group of “nightmare bacteria,” carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, which kills up to 50% of the people infected, and is on the rise. The annual impact of antibiotic resistant infections on the U.S. health care system is estimated to be $21 billion to $34 billion in excess health care costs and more than 8 million additional hospital days. At the same time, we are not making new antibiotics fast enough to prevent these deaths.

Without new antibiotics, things we all take for granted, including surgery, chemotherapy, organ transplantation and premature infant care, will be in jeopardy. A streamlined but targeted approach that speeds regulatory approval of new antibiotics — and limits their use to the sickest of the sick — is an appropriate way to balance the safety risks of these new drugs with the lifesaving benefits they can offer patients who have no other treatment options.

Full editorial: Opinion: We need more new antibiotics – CNN.com.

See also: IDSA New antibiotics report; IDSA Limited Population Antibacterial Drug Proposal