Representational image only.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Political leaders are ignoring the growing danger of antimicrobial resistance, which could lead to an unprecedented health and economic catastrophe, a high-level task force warned on April 4.

“The world now has a limited and critical window of opportunity to respond at the scale and with the urgency proportionate to the rapidly increasing threats posed by AMR,” according to a report published on April 4 by the Global Steering Group on Antimicrobial Resistance.

Resistance to antimicrobials (AMR) — antibiotics, antifungals and antiparasitics — is already wreaking havoc, and is the result of the massive use of these products to treat humans, animals and food.

Evidence is mounting that “changes occurring in the natural environment due to the climate crisis are increasing the spread of infectious disease, potentially including drug resistant infections”, the report added.

The report is part of an effort to spur action by global leaders ahead of a meeting in New York on September 26.

Resistance

Microbes that are not completely eradicated by a given substance can develop resistance to that product, gradually reducing the arsenal of drugs available to treat infections.

AMR is already one of the world’s leading causes of death, directly responsible for 1.27 million deaths a year, including one in five in children under five, mainly in low- and middle-income countries, the report said.

If left unchecked, AMR is expected to reduce life expectancy by an average of 1.8 years by 2035, leading to unprecedented healthcare costs and economic losses.

Within a decade, AMR is estimated to cost the world $412 billion a year in additional health costs and $443 billion a year in lost labour productivity, according to an economic impact study commissioned by the Global Steering Group.

Effective measures against the scourge are expected to cost an average of 46 billion dollars a year but will yield up to 13 dollars for every dollar spent by 2050, according to the impact study.

From local to global

“We have the tools to mitigate the AMR crisis and these data point to a devastating future if we don’t take bolder action now,” said GLG President Mia Amor Mottley, who is also Prime Minister of Barbados. “Commitment to the fight against AMR must be personal, local, national and global.”

The working group is making suggestions both in terms of mobilising funding — particularly from international financial institutions — and toward finding ways of overcoming the obstacles to researching and manufacturing effective new drugs.

It has established quantified targets for 2023, which it believes are the only way to effectively mobilise the various parties involved. These include reducing by 10% the number of deaths caused by bacterial AMR worldwide, and ensuring that “ACCESS group” antibiotics comprise at least 80% of all human antibiotic consumption.

The ACCESS group is made up of antibiotics used for the first- or second-line treatment of common infections with a low risk of contributing to the development and spread of antimicrobial resistance, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

Another objective is to reduce the quantity of antimicrobials used in the global agrifood system by 30-50% compared to current levels.

More radically, the group proposes to eliminate by 2030 the use of medically important antimicrobials in human and animal medicine for non-veterinary medical purposes, and in plant production and agri-food systems for non-phytosanitary purposes.

New Delhi:

Drugs to treat common infections in children and babies are no longer effective in large parts of the world, including India, due to high rates of antibiotic resistance, a study has found.

The team led by researchers at the University of Sydney in Australia found many antibiotics recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) had less than 50 per cent effectiveness in treating childhood infections such as pneumonia, sepsis (bloodstream infections) and meningitis.

The findings, published in The Lancet regional Health-Southeast Asia journal, show global guidelines on antibiotic use are outdated and need updates.

The most seriously affected regions are in Southeast Asia and the Pacific where thousands of unnecessary deaths in children resulting from antibiotic resistance occur each year, the researchers said.

The WHO has declared that antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the top 10 global public health threats facing humanity. In newborns, an estimated three million cases of sepsis occur globally each year, with up to 570,000 (5.7 lakh) deaths.

Many of these are due to lack of effective antibiotics to treat resistant bacteria.

The study adds to mounting evidence that common bacteria responsible for sepsis and meningitis in children are often resistant to prescribed antibiotics.

The research shows the urgent need for global antibiotic guidelines to be updated, to reflect the rapidly evolving rates of AMR. The most recent guidelines from the WHO were published in 2013.

The study found that one antibiotic in particular, ceftriaxone, was likely to be effective in treating only one in three cases of sepsis or meningitis in newborn babies.

Another antibiotic, gentamicin, was found likely to be effective in treating fewer than half of all sepsis and meningitis cases in children, according to the researchers.

Gentamicin is commonly prescribed alongside aminopenicillins, which the study showed also has low effectiveness in combating bloodstream infections in babies and children.

“Antibiotic resistance is rising more rapidly than we realize,” said study lead author Phoebe Williams from the University of Sydney.

“We urgently need new solutions to stop invasive multidrug-resistant infections and the needless deaths of thousands of children each year,” Williams said.

The study analysed 6,648 bacterial isolates from 11 countries across 86 publications to review antibiotic susceptibility for common bacteria causing childhood infections.

The data collated largely arose from urban tertiary hospital settings with over-representation from particular countries, especially India and China.

Williams said that the best way to tackle antibiotic resistance in childhood infections is to make funding to investigate new antibiotic treatments for children and newborns a priority.

“Antibiotic clinical focus on adults and too often children and newborns are left out. That means we have very limited options and data for new treatments,” she noted.

“This study reveals important problems regarding the availability of effective antibiotics to treat serious infections in children,” said study senior author Paul Turner, a professor at the University of Oxford, UK.

“It also highlights the ongoing need for high quality laboratory data to monitor the AMR situation, which will facilitate timely changes to be made to treatment guidelines,” Turner added.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)