Lyndal Rowlands
 
Addressing antibiotic resistance will require a global political response similar to the way the world has reacted to climate change or HIV / AIDS, Sweden’s Minister of Public Health Gabriel Wikstrom, told IPS recently.
 
“(These problems) began with a small group of experts discussing and trying to warn the rest of us and it was not until it was politically addressed that it really became an issue that was solvable.”
 
“Of course (with antibiotic resistance) we have many technical issues still to solve, and medical issues, as well but it’s foremost a political issue,” said Wikstrom.
 
Antibiotics have helped extend the average person’s life by 20 years, yet by failing to use them with care we have already begun to render them useless.
 
Heads of State and Government will discuss the pressing issue of the decreasing effectiveness of antibiotics at a high level meeting scheduled to take place at the UN in September.
 
Earlier this week, experts and political leaders from the health, agricultural and economic sectors spoke at the UN and the Yale Club of New York about what needs to happen at the September summit.
 
“What is clear is that all countries around the world need to stop treating antibiotics as if they are sweets,” Lord Jim O’Neill, Chairman of the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) told IPS. “It’s true in humans, and it’s true in agriculture.”
 
Incorrect use of antibiotics in both humans and farm animals is contributing the rapid increase in bugs which are resistant to the drugs we currently have.
 
A study led by O’Neill has found that if the problem is not addressed an additional 10 million people will die every year by the year 2050.
 
The fact that no new antibiotics have been found since the 1980s makes these new drug resistant infections even more worrying, says Sally Davies, the United Kingdom’s Chief Medical Officer.
 
“We’ve essentially got a dry pipeline of no new drugs coming through,” Davies told journalists at a press briefing here, Tuesday.
 
Already 700,000 people already die every year from drug resistant infections, a low estimate, according to the report.
 
One of the diseases which is most linked to drug resistance is Tuberculosis (TB). According to the WHO an estimated 480 000 people developed multidrug-resistant TB in 2014.
 
Aaron Motsoaledi, Minister of Health of South Africa and Chair of the Stop TB Partnership told journalists that the only drugs available to address multidrug-resistant TB are extremely toxic, and that even after long courses of these drugs, there is only a 50 percent cure rate,
 
Addressing drug resistant TB requires both investment in new drugs and investment in health care systems in developing countries, said Motsoaledi.
 
“It is a market and moral failure at the same time for most pharmaceutical companies not to be investing in finding effective cures for this world leading cause of death from infectious diseases,” he said.
 
Motsoaledi added that AMR is not the only emerging global problem putting additional strain on healthy systems in developing countries and their ability to address infectious diseases.
 
“It’s not only AMR that might come … it’s also climate change, we’re not sure what it’s going to be bring, (and) we’re encroaching on the habitats of other organisms in the animal kingdom,” said Motsoaledi, in a possible reference to Ebola.
 
Strengthened health care systems can help address AMR by preventing infections, through measures such as immunisation, hygiene.  
Training more doctors and nurse will also lead to the more appropriate use of antibiotics. However Davies emphasised that appropriate use does not necessarily mean reduced use overall.
Source: PHM