W.H.O. Plan Aims to Combat Resistance to Antibiotic Drugs

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/26/world/who-plan-aims-to-combat-resistance-to-antibiotic-drugs.html

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GENEVA — United Nations member states agreed Monday to a plan to tackle resistance to antibiotic drugs, spurred by warnings of a catastrophe for public health and heavy economic losses if they did not act.

The plan is due to be adopted Tuesday at a plenary session of the World Health Organization’s decision-making body, but its endorsement is a formality after member states meeting Monday in committee gave it unanimous support.

The plan emphasizes the need to develop surveillance of resistance; act more fully to prevent infections; better control the use of existing antibiotics; and develop mechanisms to support investment in new antibiotic drugs.

It calls on all countries to prepare action plans in line with these objectives within two years.

Margaret Chan, the W.H.O.’s director general, sang “Congratulations” after the committee took what she hailed as a historic first step to tackle an issue that health experts warn threatens to roll back many of modern medicine’s advances.

“We may be a bit late,” said Sally Davies, the British government’s chief medical adviser who led discussions on the plan, in an interview before the decision. “If you look at the trajectories of rising antimicrobial resistance, increasing use of antibiotics and a lack of new antibiotics, this could be a catastrophe.”

Around 25,000 people a year die from antibiotic-resistant infections in the European Union, according to the action plan, which cites growing resistance to the drugs available for treating a wide range of diseases, including tuberculosis, H.I.V./AIDS, malaria and pneumonia.

Recent studies led by Jim O’Neill, the former Goldman Sachs chief economist, at the request of the British government, concluded that without action to check antimicrobial resistance, superbugs would cause the deaths of 10 million people a year — more than now die of cancer — and cost the global economy $60 trillion to $100 trillion by 2050.