An Antibiotics-Free World

Members of the World Health Organization have agreed to implement a global action plan on “antimicrobial resistance” (AMR),” and have called upon the United Nations to convene a high-level meeting of political leaders in 2016. Current antibiotics are becoming increasingly ineffective, not only at fighting common illnesses like pneumonia and urinary tract infections, but also at treating a range of infections, such as tuberculosis and malaria, which now risk again becoming incurable. Failure to address AMR will affect everyone, regardless of their nationality or their country’s level of development. Indeed, by 2050, ten million people could be dying as a result of AMR, up from around 700,000 today, with China and India each housing about one million sufferers. At that point, an estimated $100 trillion in global GDP will already have been lost. No strategy, however well crafted, can succeed without the involvement of the rest of the international community. After all, if infections travel with the people who carry them, so does resistance, meaning that the only solution to AMR is a shared one.