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O'Neill Report Proposes Blueprint for Tackling Global Antibiotics Crisis

on Wednesday, 06 July 2016.

Lord O'Neill, the Commercial Secretary to the Treasury, has published his final report on the global crisis of antibiotic resistance.

Which investigation was commissioned by the UK government and the Wellcome Trust in 2014.

Many antibiotics, which were once extremely effective against infectious disease, are no longer able to treat certain drug-resistance forms of infection. The report advises that, if no action is taken to tackle the crisis, by 2050 the global annual cost of antimicrobial resistance could be ten million lives and £69 trillion in lost economic output.

The report has put forward various proposals to alleviate the crisis, including the following measures:

  • lowering the use of available antimicrobials, in particular not using certain critical antibiotics in animals
     
  • stimulating the development of new antimicrobials by endowing a global innovation fund with $2 billion to fund early-stage research, together with a bonus of $1 billion for an innovator who develops a drug effective against resistant infections
     
  • a worldwide campaign to educate patients about the dangers of demanding antimicrobial drugs
     
  • the development of instant tests to help GPs determine whether a patient really does have a bacterial infection, which can be treated by antibiotics

For more information, please contact Tom Cahill in our Pharmaceutical Law and Life Sciences team on 01923 919 330.