WHO warns of disturbing rates of antimicrobial resistance during COVID-19 pandemic


Geneva, Jun 2 (IANS): The World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that the world is "losing its ability" to use critically important antimicrobial medicines.

Speaking at a virtual press conference on Monday, the WHO chief said that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increased use of antibiotics, which ultimately will lead to higher bacterial resistance rates, Xinhua news agency reported.

Calling the threat of antimicrobial resistance "one of the most urgent challenges of our time," Tedros urged the world to find new models to incentivize sustainable innovation in this regard.

"On the supply side, there is essentially very little market incentive to developing new antibiotics and antimicrobial agents, which has led to multiple market failures of very promising tools in the past few years," he said.

A press release issued on Monday also showed that high rates of resistance among antimicrobials frequently used to treat common infections, such as urinary tract infections or some forms of diarrhea, indicate that the world is running out of effective ways to tackle these diseases.

"For instance, the rate of resistance to ciprofloxacin, an antimicrobial frequently used to treat urinary tract infections, varied from 8.4 per cent to 92.9 per cent in 33 reporting countries," the press release noted.

  

Top Stories


Leave a Comment

Title: WHO warns of disturbing rates of antimicrobial resistance during COVID-19 pandemic



You have 2000 characters left.

Disclaimer:

Please write your correct name and email address. Kindly do not post any personal, abusive, defamatory, infringing, obscene, indecent, discriminatory or unlawful or similar comments. Daijiworld.com will not be responsible for any defamatory message posted under this article.

Please note that sending false messages to insult, defame, intimidate, mislead or deceive people or to intentionally cause public disorder is punishable under law. It is obligatory on Daijiworld to provide the IP address and other details of senders of such comments, to the authority concerned upon request.

Hence, sending offensive comments using daijiworld will be purely at your own risk, and in no way will Daijiworld.com be held responsible.