Dame Sally Davies attends UN General Assembly to help combat antibiotic emergency

This week Dame Sally Davies is attending the High-Level Meeting on Antimicrobial Resistance at the 79^th United Nations General Assembly in New York.

As UK Special Envoy on AMR, Dame Sally campaigns on multiple fronts in a bid to beat the growing global problem of superbugs – bacteria that evolved to resist antibiotics, so the drugs no longer work against infections. The same is happening with fungi, viruses and parasites.

Already 1.27 million people around the world die of antimicrobial resistance each year and new research forecasts that figure will be 1.91 million a year by 2050.

‘Over the next 25 years, someone will die every three minutes from common, preventable and formerly treatable health conditions, simply because the antibiotics we use to treat them will have stopped being effective,’ writes Dame Sally in The Guardian. ‘Unless, that is, the world steps up to respond to the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance.’  

At the UN High-Level Meeting on AMR, Dame Sally will make the case for the vital steps required to halt antimicrobial resistance:

• Make antibiotics accessible in a sustainable and appropriate way to everyone who needs them; this is particularly in middle-and low-income countries which suffer proportionately more when it comes to AMR.
• Establish an independent scientific panel to measure and report on resistance in order to inform action. This would be akin to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
• Make available finance so that lower-income countries have the resources to take action on AMR.

When Dame Sally Davies was appointed to the new role of UK Special Envoy on AMR in 2019, before COVID, it was likened to ‘a silent pandemic’; today it is the ‘Antibiotic Emergency.’

New data released by the Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance (GRAM) Project showed that since 1990, 36 million lives have been lost around the world due to due to AMR. While the problem disproportionately affects developing countries and those in vulnerable situations, antimicrobial resistant infections can threaten anyone, says Dame Sally.

From cancer patients in the UK and elderly people in Japan to children in Niger, no one is exempt from the threat of AMR.

Routine surgical procedures such as caesareans and medical treatments like chemotherapy will become extremely risky due to the threat of bacterial infections.

It is not only human lives that will be lost through AMR. A 2017 World Bank report that examined the implications of AMR to 2050 for GDP, international trade, livestock production and healthcare costs found substantial negative consequences, costing trillions.

The tragic irony is that Alexander Fleming, who received the Nobel Prize in 1945 for the discovery of penicillin, warned that bacteria would become resistant if exposed to a concentration of the new drug insufficient to kill them.

So ‘superbugs’ aren’t special, they have simply evolved to survive due to the overuse and misuse of antibiotics in human and animal healthcare.

But says Dame Sally, the power to halt the problem is our hands. While global agreement and action at a country level are vital, individuals also have an important role to play.

Preventing infections in the first place, observing everyday hygiene (ie washing your hands), not asking your GP for antibiotics when they are not prescribed and finishing the course if they are, are just some of the things we can do.

Unlike climate change or the COVID pandemic, AMR isn’t seen by the public to be an emergency, so raising awareness is vital.

That’s why Trinity College is launching its first graphic short story, ‘Super Sally, AMR fighter’, in collaboration with artist Yulia Lapko, to provide information about AMR and what each of us can do to halt its spread. Watch this space!