The road to holistic infection prevention

The COVID-19 pandemic has made people more conscious of their health than ever before. Crucially, it has created awareness of the devastating impact that infectious diseases can have not just at an individual level, but also across societies and economies globally, particularly where there are no available preventive interventions or treatment options. Alongside this, access to effective antimicrobials is dwindling due to a number of factors such as antibiotic shortages and a lack of new antibiotics, exacerbating the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance (AMR).¹ As a result, AMR has become one of the top 10 global public health threats facing humanity, as declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) – something which must be addressed urgently.¹

The global effort to tackle COVID-19 resulted in unprecedented collaboration and partnerships with the healthcare industry, Government and scientific community all coming together, united in a common cause, to do everything they could to fight it. Thousands of new research programmes emerged around the world to study COVID-19, drawing on the collective expertise of many different disciplines. Through partnership and collaboration, this was made possible, moving together with incredible speed to find solutions. 

As we have learned from the pandemic, diseases are evolving and progressing more quickly than our understanding of the science behind them, and therefore the diagnostics and treatments to fight against them. The old way of working within healthcare is siloed. While the events of the last few years have done much to promote a more joined up approach, a commitment to a collective effort to tackle infection in a holistic way is essential to effectively address antibiotic resistance and create a robust approach to infection prevention and management.