Scientists from around the world attending the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) conference in Manchester recently heard that 2016 marks the year a ‘long overdue’ scientific fight back against the threat of antibiotic resistance finally gets underway.
Dr Peter Jackson, the project leader behind the AMR Centre, a newly formed public-private organisation which will conduct and fund research into new drugs and diagnostic advances, told delegates: “For the past decade agencies around the world have been expressing concern about over-use of antibiotics in human and animal health and the dramatically rising rates of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). We are moving into a new era. The international health community has stopped just talking about our diminishing supply of effective antibiotics, and started working on ways to solve this crisis.”
Dr Jackson, chair of the steering group behind the AMR Centre, which was set up in March this year and operates from the Alderley Park campus in Cheshire, cited the UK government’s AMR Review, led by economist Lord O’Neill, as key in galvanising action.
“The O’Neill Review has made it abundantly clear what will happen if we fail to act globally - some 10 million needless deaths a year by 2050, $100 trillion in lost GDP, and the reversal of decades of advances in medicine,” said Dr Jackson. “That message about economic impact has struck a chord in Europe, the USA, China and elsewhere.”