'We urgently need research': inaction against antibiotic resistance poses global threat says WHO report

Some 700,000 people die each year because medicines that once cured their conditions no longer work

With the pipeline for new antibiotics slowing to a trickle and bankruptcies driving pharmaceutical companies from the field, the World Health Organisation issued a fresh warning on Friday about the global threat of drug resistant infections.

Some 700,000 people die each year because medicines that once cured their conditions are no long effective. Yet the vast majority of the 60 new antimicrobial products in development worldwide are variations on existing therapies, and only a handful target the most dangerous drug-resistant infections, the agency said in a report.

“We urgently need research and development,” said Dr Sarah Paulin, technical officer of Antimicrobial Resistance and Innovation at the WHO and an author of two reports on the subject issued Friday. “We still have a window of opportunity but we need to ensure there is investment now so we don’t run out of options for future generations.”

Without government intervention, the United Nations estimates, resistant infections could kill 10 million people annually by 2050 and prompt an economic slowdown to rival the global financial crisis of 2008.

In the two reports, the WHO cited the grim economic realities that have been shutting down investment in the field by major pharmaceutical companies and strangling the few remaining small companies that have come to dominate development of antimicrobial therapies.

The sense of crisis has mounted in recent months as a number of American drug companies with promising new products have gone belly up. Among them is Melinta Therapeutics, which declared bankruptcy three weeks ago after failing to turn a profit on the four antibiotics it has on the market. Two other antibiotics startups, Achaogen and Aradigm, also went out of business last year.

Drug company executives, public health experts and advocates for patients have been united in urging Washington to adopt measures to shore up the finances of ailing antibiotics companies and lure pharmaceutical giants back to the field.