A microbiologist on the Max-Planck-Institute for Infection Biology prepares a bacterial colony of the strain Streptococcus pyogenes on a blood agar plate.
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Already recognized as one in all the leading public health threats facing humanity today, it’s feared that a warming world is making it harder to stop the insidious spread of drug-resistant superbugs.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which the World Health Organization has known as the “silent pandemic,” is an often ignored and growing global health crisis.
The United Nations health agency has previously declared AMR to be one in all the highest 10 global threats to human health and says an estimated 1.3 million people die every yr directly as a consequence of resistant pathogens.
That figure is heading in the right direction to “soar dramatically” without urgent motion, the WHO says, resulting in higher public health, economic and social costs and pushing more people into poverty, particularly in low-income countries.
Antimicrobials, which include life-saving antibiotics and antivirals, are medicines used to stop and treat infections in humans and animals. Their overuse and misuse, nonetheless, is understood to be the chief driver of the AMR phenomenon.
AMR occurs when microorganisms akin to bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites develop the power to persist and even grow despite the presence of medicine designed to kill them.
People have a look at the wildfire raging in a forest in Sikorahi, near Alexandroupoli, northern Greece, on August 23, 2023.
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Making matters worse, research has shown that climate change is exacerbating the AMR crisis in several ways.
“Climate change is intrinsically vital due to what is going on on with our planet and the issue is that the more our temperatures rise, the more infectious diseases can transmit — and that features AMR bacteria,” Tina Joshi, associate professor of molecular microbiology on the U.K.’s University of Plymouth, told CNBC via videoconference.
“AMR bacteria is often called a silent pandemic. The explanation its often called silent is that nobody knows about it — and it’s really sad that nobody seems to care,” Joshi said.
A ‘completely broken’ diagnostics pipeline
A report published by the UN Environment Program earlier this yr, entitled “Bracing for Superbugs,” illustrates the role of the climate crisis and other environmental aspects in the event, spread and transmission of AMR.
These include higher temperatures being related to the speed of the spread of antibiotic resistant genes between microorganisms, the emergence of AMR as a consequence of the continuing disruption of maximum weather events and increased pollution creating favorable conditions for bugs to develop resistance.
Scientists said earlier this month that a unprecedented run of worldwide temperature records means 2023 is “virtually certain” to be the warmest yr ever recorded. Extreme heat is fueled by the climate crisis, which makes extreme weather more frequent and more intense.
It form of boils all the way down to the incontrovertible fact that it isn’t economically viable to really spend money on antibiotics and their development. And that’s something that’s rocking the antimicrobial world.
Tina Joshi
associate professor of molecular microbiology on the University of Plymouth
Robb Butler, director of the division of communicable diseases, environment and health at WHO Europe, described AMR as “a particularly pressing global health challenge.”
“It’s an enormous health burden and it costs just the EU member states somewhere within the region of 1.5 billion euros ($1.6 billion) each year in health costs but additionally in lack of productivity. So, it’s an outstanding challenge,” Butler told CNBC via telephone.
Butler said he hoped the upcoming COP28 climate conference within the United Arab Emirates could provide a platform for international policymakers to start out to acknowledge the association between the climate crisis and AMR. The UAE will host the U.N.’s annual climate summit from Nov. 30 through to Dec. 12.
“The issue is that, in fact, antibiotics or antimicrobials, will not be that attractive for industry to develop. They’re expensive, they’re high-risk — and we have not seen during the last 20 years antimicrobial drugs developed with enough unique characteristics to avoid resistance.”
“We hear people talking about this ‘silent pandemic,’ but it surely should not be silent. We should always be making more noise about it,” Butler said.
“You’d imagine the [coronavirus] pandemic might have been a wake-up call, but we still don’t see enough attention to AMR.”
A petri dish remarking on the bacterial contamination of tray tables on the booth for Polygiene AB, which offers antimicrobial, antibacterial and anti odor technology, on the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg, Germany, on Wednesday, June 15, 2022.
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Butler said that perhaps his biggest concern was the way to incentivize industry leaders to tackle AMR at a time once they are fully aware they could be higher off investing in other research and development areas — akin to producing a highly profitable obesity drug, for instance.
“For me, that is the one which keeps me awake at night,” Butler said. “I can take into consideration how society might change through shocks to more prudently use antibiotics in order that we do not construct resistance to antibiotics. But when there is completely nothing within the pipeline with progressive characteristics then we have form of lost,” he added. “And that actually, really concerns me.”
The University of Plymouth’s Joshi echoed this view, describing the AMR diagnostics pipeline as “completely broken” and calling for policymakers to urgently reinvigorate this process.
“It is not profit-making,” she added. “It form of boils all the way down to the incontrovertible fact that it isn’t economically viable to really spend money on antibiotics and their development. And that’s something that’s rocking the antimicrobial world.”
The following pandemic?
Thomas Schinecker, chief executive of the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche, said last month that policymakers were at risk of failing to learn the essential lessons from the coronavirus pandemic — adding that this might have serious ramifications for the AMR health crisis.
“I don’t think that we’ve got learned the teachings that we must always have learned within the last pandemic, and I do not think we’re higher prepared for the subsequent pandemic,” Schinecker told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Oct. 19.
“I feel it is vital that we take those learnings, that we implement what we’d like to do to be prepared because the subsequent pandemic will come,” he continued.
“One in every of the concerns I actually have is that potentially antibiotic resistant bacteria may very well be that pandemic. With that, we’d like to give attention to preparing for such situations in the longer term.”
