Health chiefs’ warning over dozen deadly superbugs

They could kill 10m patients a year without new antibiotics

GLOBAL health leaders last night published a list of 12 killer superbugs which threaten an explosion of incurable disease.

The World Health Organisation produced its first register of ‘priority pathogens’ – the antibioticresistant bacteria which pose the greatest threat to human health.

More than ten million patients a year could be killed by superbugs within a generation if the problem is not tackled, experts warned.

Officials said new antibiotics are 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 at a rapid rate, 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.

Dr 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 on an almost yearly basis.

Dr Kieny urged countries to heed the advice of Britain’s superbugs tsar Jim O’Neill, who last year proposed a £17billion fund to fight the growing crisis.

Taxpayers will need to subsidise pharmaceutical giants if they are to develop vital new antibiotics over the next ten years, Lord O’Neill said in a report last summer. He claimed firms should be offered lump-sum ‘market entry’ pay- ments of up to £1billion 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 effec- tive drugs, doctors cannot treat patients. Within a generation, without new antibiotics, deaths from drug resistant infection could reach ten 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.

‘We are running out of options’

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