IAP - The Global Network of Science Academies, and the InterAcademy Medical Panel (IAMP) has issued a joint statement on ‘Antimicrobial Resistance: A Call for Action’.
In the joint statement IAP and IAMP highlight the critical role that antimicrobial (including antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal and antiparasitic) drugs play in today’s medical practices, but also that there have been dramatic increases in the number of pathogens developing resistance to these drugs.
If the current major public health problem of antimicrobial resistance is to be reduced, and if a much worse crisis is to be averted, IAP and IAMP propose a series of 10 recommendations.
Among the recommendations are a call for immediate action to include the issue of antimicrobial resistance in the global sustainable development agenda; the promotion of integrated world-wide surveillance systems that should include both human and animal diseases (so-called “one-health”); education programmes for the prudent use of antimicrobials for medical and veterinary professionals, as well as for patients and the wider public; and the need for additional research – including building research capacity in developing countries, with the aims of better understanding the determinants of resistance and of devising new therapeutics, diagnostics and vaccines.
Read the full statement here.
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