A year on from the publication of Jim O’Neill’s review on antimicrobial resistance (AMR), new guidance is being issued by NICE on antibiotic prescribing and the latest data suggests that some progress has been achieved. However, WHO data shows that there are many resistant infections that continue to pose a significant threat to public health.
Medicine risks “going back to the dark ages” without action to spur the development of new antibiotics, according to Margaret Chan, head of the World Health Organization.1 Only two new antibiotics have reached the market in the last 50 years and this has already started to have a serious impact.
In the UK, a major independent review on antimicrobial resistance, commissioned by the UK Government and led by Lord Jim O’Neill, warned that antimicrobial resistance could kill 10 million people a year by 2050 – the equivalent of one person every three seconds, with a cumulative economic cost of around 100 trillion USD. Lord O’Neill set out 10 areas where the world needs to take action, to tackle AMR. Many of these measures focused on how the unnecessary use of antimicrobials can be reduced, and the rate at which resistance increases, while others looked at how we can increase the supply of new antimicrobial drugs.2
Following the publication of the report, Professor Dame Sally Davies, chief medical officer for England, commented: “In every international forum, including the G7, G20 and the UN, we must work with our international partners to ensure global action. At present around seven per cent of deaths are due to infections. If we do not act, this could rise to 40%, as it was before we had antibiotics.
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