The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and the European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) have called on world leaders to take “strong action” to reduce the impact of antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
In joint White Paper Published yesterday CMI CommunicationsIDSA and ESCMID experts called on world leaders attending the upcoming UN High-Level Meeting on Antimicrobial Resistance to adopt a political declaration with “bold goals and practical steps” to accelerate progress on tackling antimicrobial resistance in human, animal, agricultural and environmental sectors.
“To drive truly effective and sustainable progress on AMR, the UN Political Declaration must include bold targets and be accompanied by strong funding,” the groups wrote. “We call on all participants to scale up action commensurate with the current threat of AMR and agree to a global effort with the goal of reducing global deaths from AMR by 10% by 2030.”
Antibiotic use and infection control goals
Among the targets IDSA/ESCMID recommends for reaching this goal are that 70% of antibiotics used globally come from antibiotic groups defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as access antibiotics – first- and second-line drugs with a narrow spectrum of activity that have high therapeutic efficacy and low chance of resistance – and a 30% reduction in the amount of antibiotics used in agri-food systems.
To prevent infectious diseases that drive antibiotic use around the world, world leaders should set a goal of providing essential immunization services to 14 million children worldwide, work to scale up implementation of WHO infection prevention and control guidelines to ensure all countries implement core elements, and improve access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene practices, the groups said.
We call on all participants to agree to a global commitment to scale up actions commensurate with the current threat of AMR, aiming to reduce global deaths from AMR by 10 percent by 2030.
Other recommendations include restructuring the antibiotic pipeline with a focus on developing a sustainable innovation ecosystem that can deliver medicines targeting multidrug-resistant bacteria, strengthening and expanding global AMR surveillance systems, and establishing an independent scientific committee on AMR mitigation.
“We strongly encourage them to collaborate with our society to provide the scientific evidence to guide this important study,” they wrote.
