Devex: Opinion: Global solidarity key to tackling superbugs
Bruno Bruins, Dutch politician serving as Minister for Medical Care and Sports, and Haoliang Xu, U.N. assistant secretary general and UNDP assistant administrator and director for the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support

“…Global collaboration is critical if we are to safeguard a century of progress in medicine and development and to avoid a doomsday scenario in which common injuries and infections are untreatable because of increasing resistance to available antibiotics. Coordination across key sectors and governments is central to developing a successful response, and more countries must prioritize implementing fully financed multisectoral action plans, as world leaders committed to doing so at the 2016 United Nations high-level meeting on AMR. … The next steps in scaling up the global AMR response should include strategies that deliver increased investment and public return on urgently needed innovation for new antibiotics. The U.N. Interagency Coordination Group on Antimicrobial Resistance has called for public, private, and philanthropic donors and other funders to increase investment and innovation in new antimicrobials. Finally, it is critical that strategies to improve sustainable and affordable access to medicines, vaccines, and diagnostics are at the center of the response…” (11/27).