Amanda Holpuch - UN agrees to fight 'the biggest threat to modern medicine': antibiotic resistance
All 193 UN member states are set to sign a
declaration to fight drug-resistant superbugs that are estimated to kill more
than 700,000 people each year
All 193 United Nations member
states are set to sign a declaration agreeing to combat “the biggest threat to
modern medicine” in Wednesday’s high-level meeting on antibiotic resistance.
The agreement was
reached just before the general assembly convened to discuss the threat of
antibiotic resistance, which is only the fourth health issue to trigger a general
assembly meeting.
“It’s ironic that such
a small thing is causing such an enormous public threat,” said Jeffrey LeJeune,
a professor and head of the food animal research program at Ohio State
University. “But it is a global health threat that needs a global response.”
The declaration routes
the global response to superbugs along a similar path as the one used
to combat climate change. In two years, groups including UN agencies will
provide an update on the superbug fight to the UN secretary general.
It is estimated that
more than 700,000 people die each year due
to drug-resistant infections, though it could be much higher because there
is no global system to monitor these deaths. And there has been trouble
tracking those deaths in places where they are monitored, like in the US, where
tens of thousands of deaths have not been attributed to superbugs, according to a
Reuters investigation.
Scientists warned
about the threat of antibiotic resistancedecades
ago, when pharmaceutical companies began the industrial production of
medicine. The inventor of penicillin, Alexander Fleming, cautioned of the
impending crisis while
accepting his Nobel prize in 1945: “There is the danger that the ignorant
man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal
quantities of the drug make them resistant”.
But in the last few
years, studies have dramatically increased awareness about antibiotic
resistance. There has also been considerable advocacy by health officials, like
Sally Davies, chief medical officer of the UK. “Drug-resistant
infections are firmly on the global agenda but now the real work begins,”
Davies said in a statement. “We need governments, the pharmaceutical industry,
health professionals and the agricultural sector to follow through on their
commitments to save modern medicine.”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/sep/20/un-declaration-antibiotic-drug-resistance
