United global response can address antibiotic crisis: Experts

In view of the fact that resistance to antibiotics to tackle bacterial infections and antimicrobial drugs is spreading at an alarming rate, experts have called for united global response to deal with the crisis.

Growing resistance to antibiotics and other drugs demand a coordinated global response on the same scale as efforts to address climate change, professor Mark Woolhouse of University of Edinburgh and Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust wrote in an article.

Without an international commitment to tackle the issue, the world faces a future in which simple infections that have been treatable for decades become deadly diseases, they warned.

According to them, a powerful global organisation similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) should lead an international response to the antibiotic crisis.

"The time has come to stop re-stating the problems of antimicrobial resistance and start taking action," said Woolhouse.

"We need independent, international leadership on this issue before the massive health gains that have been made since Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin are lost forever," he added.

The growing threat of antimicrobial resistance is similar to that posed by climate change because it is a natural process exacerbated by human activity and the actions of one country can have global ramifications.

Yet the international response to this threat - caused by the overuse and misuse of antimicrobial drugs - has been feeble, the authors noted.

The comments appeared in the journal Nature.