Global Cause
In this issue
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Seizing the opportunity of UNGA 2024 for bold commitments to AMR
We must strengthen our efforts to make the 2024 political commitment a game-changer with specific and bold commitments for the response to antimicrobial resistance. The 2016 Political Declaration of the High Level Meeting (HLM) of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) was a milestone that brought a paradigm shift in the...
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Why we must work together to combat the threat of AMR
Pharmaceutical companies have joined forces to launch an action fund which aims to incentivise investment in antibiotic R&D and address the global threat of antimicrobial resistance. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an alarming wake-up call — with the potential to set healthcare back by decades. “We can’t afford to underestimate the impact of AMR on global...
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The antibiotics market failure: Europe at a risky crossroad
In 2019, 4.95 million deaths were associated and 1.27 million were directly attributable to bacterial antimicrobial resistance (AMR). While the development of new effective antibiotics is crucial to respond to raising levels of AMR, the market for new antibiotics is broken. On top of scientific difficulties, current market-based incentives have largely failed to make antibiotics...
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We don’t need a new antibiotic to combat AMR, we need a new approach
New antibiotics cannot be widely prescribed without encouraging resistance to arise, posing a major challenge in how to address the R&D costs associated with novel drug development. When a pharmaceutical company develops a new improved drug, it will typically outcompete existing products and be sold to as many patients as possible. This enables patients to...
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Urgent international action is needed to beat the AMR ‘silent pandemic’
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a serious and growing global threat to public health. According to a new study in The Lancet, AMR claimed over 1.27 million lives globally in 2019, which is more than HIV and malaria. In July, the EU’s Health Emergency Response Authority declared AMR as one of its top three health threats....
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Rebuilding momentum on antibiotics research, giving innovators a chance to pull through
The pace of resistance to existing antibiotics is outpacing the rate at which new ones can reach the market and be used against difficult-to-treat infections. According to the WHO, on average, resistance is reported to most new agents two to three years post-market entry. Difficult environment to develop antibiotics Research into new antibiotics is a...
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Why we need a ‘one drug for one bug’ approach to fight infection
While currently available antibiotics fight infection, they have side effects, including the emergence of antimicrobial resistance(AMR). Pathogen-specific antibiotics may represent a new paradigm to combat AMR. The development of antibiotics was one of the most life-saving medical interventions in history, agrees Ricardo Chaves, M.D., Executive Medical Director, Infectious Diseases, at biopharmaceutical company Debiopharm in Switzerland....
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Don’t kill the cure: ensuring responsible access to essential antibiotics
There are two common assumptions about how to tackle antimicrobial resistance (AMR): that the short-term answer is just to use fewer antibiotics, and that the long-term solution is all about new drugs. Reality, as ever, is more complicated. Antibiotics are the backbone of modern medicine, treating millions of previously fatal infectious diseases and enabling routine...
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Covid-19 slowed antimicrobial resistance progress
The discovery of penicillin 94 years ago revolutionised bacterial infection treatments. However, germs adapt; and today, antimicrobial resistance is one of the most significant threats to public health worldwide. Antimicrobial resistance (AR) is a growing global health threat. AR occurs when germs like bacteria and fungi develop the ability to defeat the drugs designed to...
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Phage therapy and its bright potential in the future of AMR
Stemming from the Greek words for ‘bacteria eater,’ bacteriophages have been around for billions of years and are believed to be the most abundant organisms on earth. Earlier this year, the journal Nature Communications published a noteworthy case study: A toddler became critically ill from an extensively drug-resistant blood infection after a liver transplant. Out...