We haven’t looked after them as well as we could and should have done, which means drug resistance is going to come sooner. Like Smarties, you can buy them very cheaply in many parts of the world. “We’ve regarded antibiotics are something that is as cheap as chips.
But if we want vaccines, therapeutics, tests for which there’s no commercial model, or indeed antibiotics to treat new infections, then we’ve got to appreciate that the public sector and philanthropy, have got to be willing to invest and pay for those products for which at the moment that may be no commercial driver.”įarrar added that the world has not valued antibiotics or vaccines highly enough.
“We must not underestimate the long-term nature of research and innovation, and we need to appreciate that the private sector has got a crucial role to play. So we’re talking about the whole of modern medicine here, and yet, as a world, we’re not prepared to invest,” said Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome Trust. You can’t prevent infections in people needing intensive care, or dying after trauma or after surgery. “Without antibiotics, you can’t conduct safe surgery, you can’t have safe childbirth. “Like most biological organisms, are really quite clever and quite complex and they’ve been pushed towards an evolutionary state of dodging around the tools we have in front of us,” said Reeder. “It tends to be the higher income countries that have been using more intensively antibiotics and using the more recent antibiotics at much higher volumes that are now facing these big problems,” said Reeder. He also stressed the immediate need to ensure that countries introduce “better stewardship’ about the use of antibiotics to slow down the development of drug resistance. “We need to think about the model and how we involve pharma but not just rely on them,” said Reeder. The drug, Fexinidazole, was developed as part of an innovative partnership between the non-profit research and development organization Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DND i ) and drug company Sanofi. He gave the example of how a drug for sleeping sickness had received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2021 after being developed through such product development partnerships. “We really need to be thinking of alternative models and one of the things that I’ve been very impressed with over the last decade has been the rise of product development partnerships, which have been focusing on diseases which have no market – many of the neglected tropical diseases– and yet being able to form partnerships which drive production of new therapeutics,” he said. “We see that this isn’t really fitting with the current model of Big Pharma to do this, as there is a very long time before realising profits against quite high investment,” said Reeder. John Reeder, director of TDR, the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases and Director of the Research for Health Department at the World Health Organization (WHO), also favoured special incentives to develop new antibiotics. The European Commission was working with the EIB to provide “push and pull incentives to stimulate the development of these new antimicrobials”, she added. “Under the innovative medicines initiative, we’ve been funding a large programme to support the development of new antibiotics, and after 10 or more years, still, there’s nothing on the horizon so it’s just high risk,” said Kerstiens. Barbara Kerstiens, head of the Combatting Diseases unit in the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation at the European Commission. One of the biggest investments needed is in research and development (R&D) for new antibiotic drugs in the face of rising drug resistance – but this field attracts less than 5% of venture capital investment in pharmaceutical R&D.Ī key reason for this is the “high risk of failure”, according to Barbara Kerstiens, head of the Combatting Diseases unit in the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation at the European Commission.
European war 5 all generals how to#
This was according to global health leaders who were discussing how to attract better investment in health at an event organised by European Investment Bank (EIB) and the World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday. Russia’s war in Ukraine is draining resources to build better health systems, while Sino-American rivalry is undermining the global solidarity needed to address future pandemics.īut the massive under-investment in new antibiotics to combat drug-resistant “superbugs” and weak primary health systems might be the biggest enemies of global health.
Health systems must work together with populations, communities, and patients in addressing the COVID-19 response and other health risks
0 kommentar(er)
