Superbugs: medicine’s top crisis
New drugs must be urgently developed to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria
GLOBAL health leaders have published a list of 12 killer superbugs that threaten an explosion of incurable disease.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) produced its first register of “priority pathogens” – the antibiotic-resistant bacteria that pose the greatest threat to human health.
More than 10 million patients a year could be killed by superbugs within a generation if the problem is not tackled, experts warn.
Officials said new antibiotics were urgently needed to fight the bacteria, and called on governments around the world to pour billions into new research funds to produce the drugs.
Antibiotic resistance, the process by which bacteria evolve to fight off drugs, is increasingly seen as the biggest crisis facing modern medicine.
The more existing antibiotics are used, the more resistant bacteria become to them.
Superbugs are already breeding rapidly, with rising numbers of germs evolving to be untreatable with what were previously effective drugs.
Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO’s assistant director-general, said: “Antibiotic resistance is growing, and we are fast running out of treatment options. If we leave it to market forces alone, the new antibiotics we most urgently need are not going to be developed in time.”
The 12 superbugs on the list include E.coli and klebsiella, which can cause blood poisoning and pneumonia; salmonella, responsible for many food poisoning outbreaks; and campylobacter, which is often found on raw chicken in British supermarkets.
Kieny suggested all wealthy nations should contribute to a global antibiotics development fund.
No new class of antibiotic has been discovered since 1987, but a new infection emerges almost yearly.
Kieny urged countries to heed the advice of Britain’s superbugs expert Jim O’Neill, who last year proposed a £17 billion (R273bn) fund to fight the growing crisis. Taxpayers would need to subsidise pharmaceutical giants if they were to develop vital new antibiotics over the next 10 years, O’Neill said in a report last year. He claimed firms should be offered lump-sum “market entry” payments of up to £1bn for each new medicine, with at least 15 key drugs needed over the next decade.
At the moment, the more drugs a firm sells, the greater the profit. But doling out greater numbers of antibiotics simply increases resistance.
Because doctors are trying to reduce the number of antibiotics prescribed, companies see no way to profit from their development so have stopped researching in the area. This means only taxpayer funding will give companies an incentive, experts claim.
Tim Jinks, head of drug-resistant infections at the Wellcome Trust in London, said: “This priority pathogens list, developed with input from across our community, is important to steer research in the race against drug resistant infection – one of the greatest threats to modern health. Without effective drugs, doctors cannot treat patients. Within a generation, without new antibiotics, deaths from drug resistant infection could reach 10 million a year.
“Without new medicines to treat deadly infection, lifesaving treatments like chemotherapy and organ transplant, and routine operations like caesareans and hip replacements, will be potentially fatal.”
Professor Evelina Tacconelli, of the University of Tubingen in Germany and a major contributor to the list, said: “New antibiotics targeting this priority list of pathogens will help to reduce deaths due to resistant infections around the world.
“Waiting any longer will cause further public health problems and dramatically impact on patient care.”
Earlier this month, a study by University College London suggested that modifying existing antibiotics could make them super-strength and able to rip apart germ cells to stop infections in their tracks.