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The High-Level Meeting on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) at the UN General Assembly today is a pivotal opportunity for world leaders to adopt an ambitious and coordinated approach to tackle the biggest health challenge of our lifetime.
We are seeing the devastating impacts of AMR all around us. Babies in Nigeria are rapidly colonised with multi-drug resistant bacteria in their gastrointestinal gut, and antibiotics are becoming increasingly ineffective in treating common illnesses such as urinary tract infections. Hospital stays for patients with AMR average around 13 days, causing an additional 8 million hospital days annually.
Currently global progress on AMR is uneven, and monitoring and evaluation systems, such as TrACCS, are voluntary. Without decisive action to arrest and reverse the impacts of AMR, millions of people will be forced to live with life-long consequences of drug-resistant infections, many more will die, and the impact on the global economy will be catastrophic.
However, the solutions to prevent this crisis are not unknown and not beyond what can be afforded, especially with collaborations between governments, research organisations, the finance sector, and civil society.
Read the full story on the University of Oxford website.