THERE is currently no incentive for pharmaceutical companies to develop new antibiotics, England's former Chief Medical Officer, Sally Davies, has emphasised, amid warnings that the global death rate from antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is expected to double to 40 million by 2050 (PD 19 Sep 2024).
The ease with which AMR spreads means it is imperative that new antibiotics be developed as a matter of urgency, Davies argued.
"We've had no new classes of antibiotics come into routine use since the late '80s and the market model that would promote the creation of new ones is broken," she told the Observer.
"If you develop a new antibiotic, it might be used by someone for a weekly course once a year - where's the profit in that?"
She stressed that the rise of AMR means that routine procedures like childbirth could carry life-threatening risks within the next 25 years.
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