Global antibiotics 'revolution' needed
Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-36321394
A global revolution in the use of
antimicrobials is needed, according to a government backed report.
Lord Jim O'Neill, who led the Review on
Antimicrobial Resistance, said a campaign was needed to stop people treating
antibiotics like sweets.
It is the first recommendation in the global
plan for preventing medicine "being cast back into the dark ages".
The report has received a mixed response with
some concerned that it does not go far enough.
Superbugs, resistant to antimicrobials, are
estimated to account for 700,000 deaths each year. But modeling up to the year
2050, by Rand Europe and auditors KPMG, suggests 10 million people could die
each year - equivalent to one every three seconds.
The report brings
together eight previous interim reports that recommended:
§ An urgent and massive global awareness campaign as most people are ignorant of the risks
§ Establishing a $2bn
($1.4bn) Global Innovation Fund for early stage
research
§ Improved access to clean water, sanitation and cleaner hospitals to prevent infections
spreading
§ Reduce the unnecessary vast antibiotic use in agriculture including a ban on
those "highly critical" to human health
§ Improved surveillance of the spread of drug resistance
§ Paying companies $1bn
(£0.7bn) for every new antibiotic
discovered
§ Financial incentives to develop new tests to prevent
antibiotics being given when they will not work
§ Promoting the use of vaccines and alternatives to drugs
The review said the economic case for action
"was clear" and could be paid for using a small cut of the current
health budgets of countries or through extra taxes on pharmaceutical companies
not investing in antibiotic research.
Lord Jim O'Neill, the economist who led the
global review, said: "We need to inform in different ways, all over the
world, why it's crucial we stop treating our antibiotics like sweets.
"If we don't solve the problem we are
heading to the dark ages, we will have a lot of people dying. "We have
made some pretty challenging recommendations which require everybody to get out
of the comfort zone, because if we don't then we aren't going to be able to
solve this problem."
Eight
years of hell:
It is hoped the measures will prevent more
people going through experiences like Emily Morris from Milton Keynes. She has
regular urinary
tract infections that do not respond to some antibiotics and could
cause kidney damage or even death.
She says: "With every sting and every
pain, my heart sinks at the thought of how many antibiotics I have left to use
this time. "I've had the struggle of living with a resistance to
antibiotics for nearly eight years of my life...there is a clear need for new
antibiotics."
Pharma
challenge:
Exactly how to encourage the drugs industry
to make new antibiotics has been a long running problem - there has not been a
new class of antibiotics discovered since the 1980s.
A new antibiotic would be kept on the shelf
for use in emergencies so a company could never make back its huge research and
development costs.
John Rex, from the antibiotics unit at
AstraZeneca, said a new way of paying for drugs, as proposed in the report, was
needed.
He argued: "Such models should recognise
antibiotics as the healthcare equivalent of the fire extinguisher - they must
be available on the wall at all times and have value even when used only
infrequently."
Not
enough:
But Dr Grania Brigden, from the charity
Médecins Sans Frontières, said: "This report is an important first step in
addressing this broad market failure, it does not go far enough."
MSF said infections resistant to drugs were a
threat to their work around the world from the war-wounded in Jordan to
newborns in Niger.
Dr Brigden added: "The O'Neill report
proposes considerable new funding to overcome the failures of pharmaceutical
research and development, but the proposals do not necessarily ensure access to
either existing tools or emerging new products.
"Instead, in some cases, the report's
solution is simply to subsidise higher prices rather than trying to overcome
them."
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