Use Covid-19 Lessons to Battle Deadly Drug-resistant 'Superbugs': WHO

Lessons learned during the Covid-19 pandemic should be used to fight the spread of drug-resistant bacteria, which kill tens of thousands of people each year, the World Health Organization said Thursday. “Antibiotics present the Achilles heel for universal health coverage and our global health security,” Haileyesus Getahun, who heads the WHO’s antimicrobial resistance division, warned in a statement. “Opportunities emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic must be seized to bring to the forefront the needs for sustainable investments in of new and effective antibiotics.” Among other things, he said, there should be a global mechanism to pool funding to battle the scourge of antimicrobial resistance, along the same lines as the mechanisms created to fund the development of Covid-19 vaccines. It also pointed out that a full 82 percent of recently approved antibiotics were derivatives of existing antibiotic classes with well-established drug-resistance, warning that “rapid emergence of drug-resistance to these new agents is expected.” The report highlighted the urgent need to develop new antibacterial treatments, saying those currently in the pipeline were “insufficient” to tackle the challenge. Faced with a dire lack of effective antibiotics, this year’s report for the first time also listed an overview of “non-traditional antibacterial medicines” that could help fill the gap.