08 Oct 2019
Chatham House published a Review of Progress on Antimicrobial Resistance, revealing a mixed picture in terms of progress on critical recommendations to tackle antimicrobial resistance, as well as opportunities for further action and key obstacles that need to be overcome. Daniel Berman, Global Health Lead at Nesta Challenges, leading the Longitude Prize, who attended the event commented:
“After three years, today’s report confirms that global progress on battling antibiotic resistance is flagging in crucial areas. Although awareness of antibiotic resistance has been significantly raised, there has been very little progress on creating a Global Market Entry Reward (a financial incentive), or international fund to support the introduction of new antibiotics, vaccines and diagnostics. Multinational pharmaceutical companies actually have fewer projects to develop antibiotics than they did when the report was launched three years ago. When it comes to diagnostics, although there are exciting new technologies, not enough has been done to convince people that, in the vast majority of cases, diagnostic tests should be run before any antibiotics are prescribed or used. Today, Jim O’Neill rightly called our lack of progress on driving point-of-care diagnostics development — at the market and ministerial level — a failing.
“Yet, as we saw with the NHS UTI report this week, simply mandating that the volume of antibiotic use is reduced or limited is too blunt an instrument and can even have negative, unintended consequences. As political momentum lags, we need a dramatic shift in the mobilisation of civil society, driving awareness and empowerment of the public to tell their stories and drive change from the ground up. Clearly communicating the importance of tests and financing the development of sophisticated, but easy-to-use, diagnostics — plus the better use of current diagnostic tests to prove infections are present — is a key place to start.”
For additional comment or interview opportunities, please contact
Kasia Murphy [email protected] / +44 7774736497 or
Andrew McKay [email protected](link sends e-mail) / +44 2077543610
