It is often described as the silent pandemic, but there is nothing silent about antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
Dr. Manica Balasegaram
Executive Director
Global Antibiotic Research & Development Partnership (GARDP)
“While there is a clear need for investment into the development of new drugs like this, broader global solutions are needed to beat AMR.”
AMR currently kills at least 1.27 million people a year globally — more than HIV/AIDS and malaria combined. And no matter who you are or where you live, we are all at risk.
While many now recognize that we need new and effective antibiotics treatments to outpace the spread of drug-resistant bacteria, the scale and breadth of the global response is still not reflecting the scale or scope of the problem — nor the level of urgency required.
Far from being some kind of looming threat that will happen suddenly — like a pandemic — AMR is a global crisis that is already upon us. Gonorrhea is just one example; once highly treatable, today we are seeing an alarming trend of outbreaks of “super-gonorrhea,” which are resistant to all antibiotics, which means it could become one of the first diseases to once again become untreatable, unless new antibiotics are developed.
People over profit
My organization is working to prevent this scenario from happening, with the development of the first in a new class of antibiotics that could potentially treat drug-resistant gonorrhea.
While there is a clear need for investment into the development of new drugs like this, broader global solutions are needed to beat AMR — ones that not only solve the market failures that helped create this problem, but also the public health failures that have resulted from it.
That is why in addition to helping develop new treatments against multidrug-resistant bacteria that pose the greatest public health threat, it is important to ensure these treatments reach the people that need them most, and continue to do so. Our aim is to make this possible by helping to rebuild a global pipeline for antibiotics that is driven by public health need, rather than profit.
