Prevention Matters

The proposed ban on text messaging at the wheel by interstate truck and bus drivers was named the “Best Prevention Idea of the Week,” while the possibility of gonorrhea becoming a drug-resistant superbug was named the “Worst Prevention Idea of the Week."

The “Best/Worst” awards are announced each week in “Prevention Matters,” the blog of Partnership for Prevention. Nominees are submitted by Partnership staff as well as the general public, and are voted on by the staff. Partnership for Prevention is a nonpartisan organization of business, nonprofit and government leaders who are working to make evidence-based disease prevention and health promotion a national priority. More information is available at http://www.prevent.org/.

BEST

Government Set to Ban Texting by Truck, Bus Drivers

The Transportation Department last Wednesday proposed a ban on text messaging at the wheel by interstate truck and bus drivers, following up on its call to reduce distractions that lead to crashes. The proposal would make permanent an interim ban announced in January by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, applying to drivers of buses and commercial trucks over 10,000 pounds. The drivers could face civil or criminal penalties. The proposal "keeps our commitment to making our roads safer by reducing the threat of distracted driving," LaHood said.

WORST

Gonorrhea Close to Gaining Superbug Status

Unless medical experts devise a new way to treat it, gonorrhea -- the world's second most common sexually transmitted infection, after chlamydia -- will soon become a drug-resistant superbug. "This is a very clever bacteria. If this problem isn't addressed, there is a real possibility that gonorrhea will become a very difficult infection to treat," Catherine Ison, a British gonorrhea specialist, told Reuters. Right now, gonorrhea is treated with a single antibiotic dose, of either cefixime or ceftriaxone. But some strains of the illness are becoming resistant to both drugs, meaning treatment could become increasingly difficult without innovations.

The recent revelation of the first U.S. case of an especially drug-resistant form of tuberculosis is the result of a six-month study by the Associated Press of the "soaring global challenge of drug resistance."

"Today, all the leading killer infectious diseases on the planet — TB, malaria and HIV among them — are mutating at an alarming rate, hitchhiking their way in and out of countries," write AP reporters Margie Mason and Martha Mendoza. "The reason: Overuse and misuse of the very drugs that were supposed to save us."