We have more medical news tonight.

There is a growing health crisis in the US involving antibiotics.

But but the problem isn't the medications.

It's that we're becoming resistant to them.

We spoke to an infectious disease pharmacist at Duke Chandler Hospital to learn about the precautions you can take to avoid becoming resistant to these infection fighting drugs.

We know a common misconception is that actual like patients or humans and animals as well, can actually develop resistance to the bacteria.

But it's actually the germs or the bacteria developing resistance to combat the antibiotics.

And so essentially, they are becoming smarter against antibiotics, and therefore, the antibiotics don't work as well.

There's only a limited amount of antibiotics.

And so when you have these what we call multi-drug resistant organisms or bacteria, it's hard to find a way to kill the infection, which can lead to prolong complications.

And I mean, people there's been deaths and morbidity associated with it.

The CDC has actually been tracking this for several years now.

There's been about two and a half million infections that have required hospitalizations across the US solely from antimicrobial resistance.

It has led to several thousand deaths across the US.

Antimicrobial resistance should be at the fore.

Thought of a lot of people because it is a public health crisis.

When you go to see a doctor, really just knowing to answer the questions of, you know, do I have a bacterial infection or do I have a virus.

And so like we had mentioned before, viruses cannot be combated or treated with antibiotics.

And so things like a respiratory illness or the common cold is what we usually refer to, especially in the season that we're in.

A lot of that is viruses.

We all have to do it together.

It's definitely a community and a health care problem.

First and foremost, good hygiene.

So washing your hands, making sure that you're handling your your meats appropriately while you're cooking them because animals get handed antibiotics or get fed antibiotics that essentially linger even after they are butchered.

So hand hygiene, handling your meats properly, washing your vegetables appropriately, because vegetables are not out of the out of the scope of this as well.

And then again, just being aware of, you know, talking to your providers and making sure that you're getting antibiotics appropriately and once you finish them, if you still have antibiotics left over, don't keep it for the next infections, properly dispose of them.

A lot of your retail pharmacies and pharmacies across the country will send you to a place that have safe disposable systems for antibiotics and other medications.

I do want to say another thing that you want to consider from a from prevention perspective is vaccination.

So a lot of people think vaccinations more from a virus perspective, but a lot of your vaccines are for bacterial infections and things like pertussis.

A lot of older patients need to get their pneumococcal vaccine and things like that.

So just making sure that you're up to date, your vaccinations, because that also will prevent you from not only getting the infection, but not needing the antibiotics to further antimicrobial resistance.

Dr. Stoner says that if you think you have a virus, but the symptoms last longer than ten days, it's possible that you do need antibiotics and you should contact your doctor.