CIDRAP News: Wellcome calls for more focused antimicrobial resistance agenda
“…[W]hile there’s been a lot of talk about AMR in the ensuing years [since the United Nations (U.N.) high-level meeting on AMR in 2016], there hasn’t been as much action. And even before the COVID-19 pandemic became the biggest public health threat the world has seen since the 1918 influenza pandemic, there was a risk that the AMR agenda was losing the momentum it’s gathered since the U.N. high-level meeting. Those are just a few of the conclusions from a new report on the global AMR response by the Wellcome Trust, which spent the past year speaking with 150 experts from the public health, policy, and scientific communities to craft a strategy for addressing drug resistance in a post-COVID world…” (Dall, 11/18).

Financial Times: FT Health: Future of Antibiotics
“This report examines the causes and effects of an increasing global resistance to antibiotics: from the pressures doctors are under to prescribe them even for viral infections, to what new treatments are currently in the pipeline, as well as what role can the consumer play in reducing antibiotic use in the food chain…” (Multiple authors, 11/18).

U.N. News: Silent Pandemic: Overuse renders antimicrobials less effective — U.N. agriculture agency
“People, plants, and animals around the world are dying from untreatable infections — even with the best medicines available — due to a rise in antimicrobial resistance, the U.N. food agriculture agency said on Wednesday, kicking off World Antimicrobial Awareness Week. Antimicrobial medicines, including antibiotics, have long been overused and misused, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which added that antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is ‘spreading further and faster every day’…” (11/18).