Recent news

April 2011

Global health officials call for increased research and policies to address growing drug resistance worldwide

April 8, 2011 -- On this year’s World Health Day, global health officials warned that the growing spread of antibiotic resistance worldwide has threatened the fight against diseases such as tuberculosis (TB), malaria, and hospital-acquired infections. Drug resistance "kills hundreds of thousands of people every year" and jeopardizes the "care and control of infectious diseases that in the past were curable," World Health Organization (WHO) Stop TB Department Director Mario Raviglione said. The “message is loud and clear … The world is on the brink of losing these miracle cures," WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said. She added, "The emergence and spread of drug-resistant pathogens has accelerated. More and more essential medicines are failing. The therapeutic arsenal is shrinking.”

To address this issue, health officials called on countries to:

• Develop national plans with accountability and civil society engagement
• Strengthen surveillance and laboratory capacity to detect and monitor drug resistance, and
• Ensure access to quality drugs

In addition, officials and health groups highlighted the need for new drugs as part of global and national plans to fight infectious diseases. In a statement, US Agency for International Development Administrator Rajiv Shah said that antimicrobial drug resistance is "a growing problem with implications for both national and global security. … On this World Health Day, we pledge to contain the emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance through the continued development of innovative tools and approaches that improve medicine use, assure medicine quality and strengthen health systems.” The Global Alliance for TB Drug Development (TB Alliance) in a blog post wrote that “today’s public and private TB drug developers are harnessing the power of scientific innovation and are on the verge of breakthroughs that hold the potential to treat drug-resistant TB, and to improve treatment of drug-sensitive TB, which will, in turn, stem the subsequent development of new TB drug resistance.” See the links below for more information.

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