Global war urged on antibiotic resistance

The battle against antibiotic resistance needs to go global, with sweeping changes to the way the medications are developed, financed, and used, according to an international group of infectious disease specialists. Writing online in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, Otto Cars, MD, of Uppsala University in Sweden, and colleagues argue that the time has come for worldwide, coordinated action to preserve antibiotic effectiveness. Effective antibiotics are “indispensable in all health systems,” Cars and colleagues wrote, but their value is threatened by rising rates of drug resistance among pathogens. Absent a global strategy to tackle resistance, they argue, “within just a few years, we might be faced with dire setbacks, medically, socially, and economically.” “The causes of antibiotic resistance are complex and include human behavior at many levels of society,” Cars said in a statement. “The consequences affect everybody in the world.” The report of the 26 experts is “very authoritative,” commented Henry Chambers, MD, of the...