Govs urged to be AWaRe

GOVERNMENTS around the world are being encouraged to adopt the AWaRe tool developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) Essential Medicines List, to reduce the spread of antimicrobial resistance.

Launching the tool, which classifies antibiotics into three categories - Access, Watch and

Reserve - on Tue 18 Jun, the WHO noted that 50% of antibiotics in most countries were used inappropriately to treat viruses.

WHO Director General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned the spread of resistant gram-negative bacteria, was “one of the more urgent health risks of our time”, adding it “threatens to undo a century of medical progress”.

“All countries must strike a balance between ensuring access to life-saving antibiotics and slowing drug resistance by reserving the use of some antibiotics for the hardest-to-treat infections,” he said.

“I urge countries to adopt AWaRe, which is a valuable and practical tool for doing just that.”

WHO Assistant-Director General for Access to Medicines, Dr Mariangela Simao, warned the lack of investment in new antibiotics had created “an invisible pandemic”.

“We are already starting to see signs of a post-antibiotic era, with the emergence of infections that are untreatable by all classes of antibiotics,” she said.

“We must safeguard these precious last-line antibiotics to ensure we can still treat and prevent serious infections.”