It’s also an worldwide threat, because drug resistance spreads easily across species and throughout the world, observing no political boundaries.
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Despite the efforts of United Kingdom health officials to raise awareness about AMR among healthcare providers and the public, the report also found that total antibiotic consumption in the United Kingdom increased by 2.4% from 2013 to 2014, with much of the consumption being driven by hospital (rather than community) use. “It doesn’t happen very often for health issues”. The UN has discussed health issues only three times before. The others were the HIV/AIDS crisis (in 2001); chronic illnesses, such as heart attacks, stroke, diabetes and cancers (2011); and the Ebola epidemic (2014).
The spread of superbugs that are resistant to all known drug treatments could spark a global financial crisis on the level of the 2008 meltdown or worse, a World Bank-led study warned on Monday.
Key findings of the report are based on World Bank Group projections of the world economy in 2017-2050.
On Tuesday, in a rare case of collaboration among competitors, 13 leading pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi, presented a roadmap laying out several commitments they pledge to deliver by 2020 to reduce drug resistance.
Those answers will have to come from future research, he says, as well as more detailed information on how recently adopted efforts to control overuse of antibiotics are working.
Antimicrobial resistance refers to infections that have evolved the ability to withstand drugs that ought to stop them.
These days a growing number of people find their bodies resistant to drugs to treat not just obscure diseases, but commonplace ones like skin and blood ailments, or urinary tract infection. Many of those infections, including MRSA and C. diff, originate in hospitals. In the United States alone, the CDC estimates that at least 2 million people are infected with resistant bugs each year, and at least 23,000 people die each year as a direct result. Of the additional 28.3 million people falling into extreme poverty in 2050, the majority (26.2 million) would live in low-income countries.
One issue, Fauci said, is the “clearly inappropriate use” of antibiotics to boost national food production: 80 percent of antibiotics consumed in the United States actually go to animals raised for food. Numerous same drugs are used in people and livestock, with more than 70 percent by weight of those antibiotics going to animals.
Azzad Asset Management, investment advisor to the Azzad Funds, announced today that it has joined a consortium of responsible investors and shareholder advocacy groups in support of a United Nations’ call to end antibiotic use in global food supply chains. Banning the use of such drugs would drive up meat costs when the world demand for protein is growing. Antibacterial washes down the drainSome institutions have become aware of the issues surrounding this resistance and are consequently aiming to improve the everyday products that we use to maintain ‘cleanliness.’ In early September, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned over-the-counter antibacterial washes that contained certain active ingredients from being marketed in the country.Janet Woodcock, MD, Director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) explains in the press release that “consumers may think antibacterial washes are more effective at preventing the spread of germs, but we have no scientific evidence that they are any better than plain soap and water.”The FDA press release also explains that manufacturers could not show that these products were “safe for long-term daily use”.
But for Laxminarayan and other experts, the session can already be seen as a major success in that it’s a recognition that the world needs to turn its attention to the issue.
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The hope is that public agreement by senior leaders will help trigger action among officials and researchers in their home countries, said Allan Coukell, senior director for health programs at The Pew Charitable Trusts, which has a project tracking antibiotic resistance. As long as any source of resistance is allowed to persist, so does the risk to our health care systems. The Obama administration announced a national action plan to combat superbugs past year, and established a presidential council to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The fact that use of antibiotics remains the same and isn’t declining is concerning enough, since it hints that doctors are still prescribing drugs at the same rate as they have in the past, despite recent studies showing that many prescriptions aren’t necessary and are for the wrong types of infections for which antibiotics don’t work.
