Resistance
Many improvements in medical technology and lifesaving interventions depend on the availability of effective antibiotics for the most vulnerable patient population. Global health data points to escalating levels of bacterial resistance that threaten the advances of modern medicine. The ECDC estimates that about 25,000 patients die each year in the EU from infection with multi-drug resistant bacteria resulting in added health care costs and productivity losses of at least EUR 1.5 billion each year. For some infections, no active antibiotic is currently available. At the same time, discovery of novel antibiotics has slowed to a crawl and the gap between the burden of infections due to multi-drug resistant bacteria and the development of new antibiotics threatens previous advances of medical science.
A few examples of common multi-drug resistant pathogens:
| Healthcare-associated | Community-associated |
| Staphylococcus aureus | Staphylococcus aureus |
| Enterococcus spp. (especially E. faecium) | Streptococcus pneumoniae |
| Enterobacteriaceae (e.g. Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae) | Escherichia coli |
| Pseudomonas aeruginosa | Neisseria gonorrhoeae |
| Acinetobacter | Salmonella sp. |
Worldwide resistance hot spots (Theuretzbacher U. Global antibacterial resistance: The never-ending story. J Global Antimicrob Resist, 2013,1:63–69):
More information:
- Theuretzbacher U. Global antibacterial resistance: The never-ending story. J Global Antimicrob Resist (2013,1:63–69)
- European Resistance Surveillance, EARS-NET, ECDC
- Resistance Map, CDDEP
- Rolain JM, Canton R, Cornaglia G. Emergence of antibiotic resistance: need for a new paradigm. Clin Microbiol Infect 2012;18:615–6
- Ramanan L, David LH. Challenges of drug resistance in the developing world. BMJ 2012;344:e1567
- European Commission’s action plan 2011
- Transatlantic Task Force
- The World Economic Forum, Global Risks Report 2013
Leave a Reply