Nations unite at the UN to combat antimicrobial resistance threat

At the recent United Nations General Assembly in New York, all countries approved a major new political declaration to radically scale up efforts to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR) – a major threat to modern medicine.

AMR threatens to unwind a century of medical progress, and could return us to the pre-antibiotic era, where infections that are treatable today could become much harder to treat and grow potentially deadly tomorrow.

AMR is caused largely by the misuse and overuse of antimicrobial medicines – such as antibiotics – making microbes resistant to them, and diseases more dangerous and deadly.

It’s an issue with implications for health at large. Medical facilities are often where the most stubbornly treatment-resistant infections emerge and spread. AMR makes all manner of routine health procedures riskier; in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), approximately 11 percent of people who undergo surgery are infected in the process.

The burden of treatment-resistant infections falls heaviest on LMICs, where AMR is worsened by a lack of access to clean water, stretched health systems, limited budgets, poor access to diagnosis and appropriate treatment, and a lack of enforcement of legislation. Sepsis in newborns that spreads in hospitals is a particularly dramatic illustration of how tough the situation is in LMICs.

The crisis in equitable access to new and existing antimicrobial medicines is also felt most acutely in LMICs, where a lack of availability is a much bigger problem than misuse and overuse – the tools aren’t there in the first place. A lack of access to vaccines increases the risk of drug-resistant infections and a lack of access to diagnostics means it is harder to detect drug-resistant infections and prescribe the right treatments.

AMR also compounds challenges in some of the world’s most difficult circumstances. From Gaza to Sudan to Ukraine, AMR makes wartime injuries harder to treat. Even before the current conflict, AMR was found to be significantly increasing in Gaza, with a 300 percent rise in resistance to specific antibiotics in injured patients after the 2018-19 demonstrations.

The drug-resistant infections that start in conflict zones rarely stay within them, as people flee, medical evacuations are arranged, and soldiers are cared for alongside civilians in hospitals, leading AMR to spread. This is yet another reason why the best medicine is peace.

AMR is associated with more than a million deaths a year, with an escalating death toll projected over the coming decades.

Addressing AMR is not easy. What we do know is that plans that span health, environmental, animal and agrifood systems lead to progress, but so far, they have only been pursued in high-income countries. This needs to change.

But while alarms on AMR have been blaring ever louder, solutions have not been developed fast enough, especially in the research and development of antibiotics. Since mid-2017, only 13 new antibiotics have been authorised, with only two representing a new chemical class and considered innovative.

The political declaration just approved in New York includes commitments and targets across human health, animal health, agriculture and the environment.

Headline commitments include reducing the global deaths associated with drug-resistant bacteria by 10 percent by 2030 and ensuring that at least 70 percent of antibiotics used for human health globally belong to the safer WHO Access group of antibiotics, which have the lowest potential to cause AMR. Projections show that many of these deaths are avoidable, including by ensuring access to life-saving antimicrobial medicines in LMICs.

This meeting’s biggest opportunity is for it to become a springboard to bring in more funding, to turn the targets and commitments in its declaration into reality.

The investment case for AMR is clear, in light of the huge cost of inaction. Estimates from Quadripartite and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) show that globally, AMR could lead to additional healthcare expenditures reaching as high as $412bn annually in the next decade if a stronger AMR response isn’t mounted. It would also impose workforce participation and productivity losses of $443bn. But this study also shows that implementing critical AMR interventions is a “best buy”, with $7 to $13 expected in return on every $1 invested.

To help ground these important, albeit technical, discussions of mortality projections and catalytic funding, the meeting’s opening and closing segments featured statements from AMR survivors named Ella and John.

Ella lives with cystic fibrosis and has had to rely on an experimental treatment to get better after no viable antibiotic options were left after she contracted the most severe drug-resistant infection she’d ever had. For John, surgery for a simple hip fracture turned into a year of hospital stays after an infection to the incision site spread to his bloodstream and became resistant to multiple drugs. His kidneys nearly stopped working.

A successful response to AMR relies on political commitment, sustainable financing, measuring progress with accountability and most importantly, placing Ella, John and all those affected at the centre of the response.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.