Infection control is everybody’s business so as we’re half way through World Antibiotic Awareness Week, we thought we’d share the statistics to prove why this is so.  In the recent final report and recommendations of Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, chaired by Jim O’Neill (May 2016) detailed scenario analyses provided the basis for their conclusion.  These included:

• The 700,000 deaths  globally in 2016 from Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) could increase to 10 million per year by 2050 – more people than currently die from cancer and a staggering death toll of one person every 3 seconds.

• In the two years it took from the Report commencing start to its publication over 1 million people have died from AMR and new forms of resistance have emerged that were not known about in 2014.The Bella Moss Foundation (with a little help from the National Office of Animal Health and the Kennel Club Charitable Trust) has created a fun family-friendly video to explain antibiotic resistance - and encourage us all to listen to our medics and vets in order to help beat the bugs!

Watch it here - and please share with your network: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5nTar7pU9Y

The "Tackling Drug-Resistant Infections Globally" Report goes on to consider that these human and economic forecasts may be too low, because the secondary effects of antibiotics losing their effectiveness weren’t taken into account, such as the risks in carrying out caesarean sections, hip replacements, or gut surgery.

The good news is that there has already been some exciting progress.  For example, the UK government has initiated the Fleming Fund to improve disease surveillance focused on drug-resistant infections in low and middle-income countries, and has contributed $375 million to it. This work is incredibly important for tackling AMR but it must go hand in hand with the recent impetus to achieve truly effective global disease surveillance to track resistance - and to make sure that health systems are better prepared for epidemics.

 The Report advises that four interventions are going to be particularly important:

1. We need a global public awareness campaign to educate all of us about the problem of drug resistance, and in particular children and teenagers

2. We need new drugs to replace the ones that are not working anymore because of resistance

3. We need to use antibiotics more sparingly in humans and animals, to reduce the unnecessary use that speeds up drug resistance. To do this, we need a step change in the diagnostic technology available

4. We must reduce the extensive and unnecessary use of antibiotics in agriculture

Although AMR is a massive challenge, it is one that Jim O’Neill believes is well within our ability to tackle effectively - as long as everyone is aware that infection control is everybody’s business.  After all, we need reliable, non-resistant forms of antibiotic to prevent  deaths from infectious bacterial diseases.