Ending the AMR Cycle

According to the World Health Organisation's (WHO) annual review of antibacterial agents in clinical and preclinical development, the R&D pipeline for new antibacterial medicines is insufficient to tackle the challenge of increasing emergence and spread of antibiotic resistance. Furthermore, the availability and access to new and existing antibiotics, including generics, is a challenge for countries of all income levels. The Global Leaders Group on AMR recently reiterated that the world faces a serious antibiotic pipeline and access crisis that requires innovative financing measures.

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Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) among bacterial pathogens is a silent pandemic and an urgent global public health threat. These superbugs, which are able to resist multiple antibiotics, are on the rise and have claimed millions of lives worldwide as well as long-term disabilities, and high economic costs associated with the healthcare burden.

According to a study by the Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance (GRAM) Project published in the Lancet, 33 common bacterial infections were either directly or indirectly responsible for 7.7 million deaths in 2019. MRSA, an infection that primarily occurs in people who’ve been in hospitals or other healthcare settings, alone caused more than 100,000 deaths in 2019. These bacterial pathogens are deadlier than most better monitored pathogens such as malaria, HIV or tuberculosis.

The overuse and misuse of antibiotics have led to the emergence of AMR, which is a complex problem that requires a multi-pronged approach to address. The annual AMR death toll is expected to double by 2050 without sufficient intervention.

Environmental sustainability

The constant presence of antimicrobials in our environment increases the spread of AMR driven by the environmental impacts of the manufacture, use and disposal of antimicrobials. In both livestock and humans between 40 and 90 per cent of an antibiotic dose administered is excreted in faeces or urine. In agriculture, these excretes frequently reach the environment and are contaminating soil, plants and water. Pharmaceutical effluent discharge from manufacturing sites have also shown contamination often greater than those of agriculture and humans.