Lord O’Neill has set out the final recommendations of his review, which are aimed at delivering action on what has been described as the ‘biggest threat posed to mankind’ of antimicrobial resistance.
The UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, first commissioned the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) in July 2014 to address the growing global problem of drug-resistant infections. Chaired by Lord Jim O’Neill, the Review has since published a series of eight reports discussing a wide range of issues – from the need for rapid diagnostics to stop unnecessary use of antibiotics, plans to overhaul the global antibiotics pipeline, the economic burden of AMR, to the importance of reducing global antibiotic use in livestock.
In his latest, and final, report Lord Jim O’Neill highlights the scale of the problem: “Without policies to stop the worrying spread of AMR, today’s already large 700,000 deaths every year would become an extremely disturbing 10 million every year, more people than currently die from cancer…Even at the current rates, it is fair to assume that over one million people will have died from AMR since I started this Review in the summer of 2014.”
To avoid the world being ‘cast back into the dark ages of medicine’, Lord O’Neill has set out his final recommendations; many of the measures outlined in the report focus on reducing the unnecessary use of antimicrobials, while others look at how the supply of new antimicrobial drugs can be increased. Four of the action points have been highlighted as being particularly important. These include:
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