Ten million deaths a year and a hundred trillion dollars. These alarming figures will be attributed to antimicrobial resistance by 2050, according to a report by English economist Lord Jim O’Neill, entitled “The Global Confrontation of Drug-Resistant Infections: Final Report and Recommendations“. THE’antibiotic resistanceis the resistance of bacteria to antibiotics. Whenever these drugs are used in excess or in the wrong context, the pathogenic bacteria can evolve and develop resistance. Strains that have become insensitive to the antibiotic survive, and therefore become very difficult to eradicate. Already today, “700,000 people die from antibiotic resistance each year“, warns the report. when antibiotics lose their effectiveness, medical procedures now considered low risk (appendicitis operation, cesarean section, chemotherapy …) and easily curable bacterial diseases (cystitis, pneumonia …) can become fatal again.
Reduce global antibiotic consumption
But according to Jim O’Neill, it is not too late to reverse the trend, provided you follow a series of recommendations to the letter. The economist thus proposes a first measure to be applied urgently: to reduce the antibiotic consumption. To do this, he advocates information campaigns so that patients and breeders order less antibiotics, and that doctors and veterinarians prescribe less. Livestock is indeed a sector very greedy in antibiotics, which, after being administered to animals, are found in meat, dairy products and the environment. In addition, improving hygiene and preventing the spread of bacterial infection in all countries, for example by facilitating access to water, are two proposals that would make it possible to limit the consumption of antibiotics. Finally, better surveillance of bacterial diseases and faster diagnoses would reduce the use of antibiotics and therefore the risks of antibiotic resistance.
Encourage medical research
Another way to fight antibiotic resistance is to use alternatives to these drugs or find new ones. Vaccines, for example, make it possible to reduce the incidence of bacterial diseases and therefore reduce the number of prescriptions for antibiotics. The British report therefore recommends launching large vaccination campaigns, but also promoting biomedical research that explores new families of antibiotics. Indeed, few researchers are currently working on the identification of new molecules, because these studies are not profitable. But if pharmaceutical companies all receive the obligation to find new antibacterial drugs themselves, or to finance research, the discovery of new molecules will be facilitated.
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