A research hub for antibiotics resistance

A research hub for antibiotics resistance

News:

1. Denmark has announced to create an international research centre focused on the fight against resistance to antibiotics.

Important Facts:

2. Denmark signed a memorandum of understanding in Seattle, US, with the international network of research centres CGIAR, to establish the centre.
3. The International Centre for Interdisciplinary Solutions on AMR (Antimicrobial Resistance), financed by Denmark and private investors, will open in 2019 and is expected to employ up to 500 people.
4. Data: In 2016, 4,90,000 people developed a resistance to antibiotics, according to figures from the World Health Organisation.
5. The growing problem causes 33,000 deaths in Europe each year, a recent study by the Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said.
6. The burden of these infections is comparable to that of influenza, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS combined, according to ECDC.
7. About Anti-microbial resistance:

• Discovered in the 1920s, antibiotics have saved tens of millions of lives by defeating bacterial diseases such as pneumonia, tuberculosis and meningitis.
• But over the decades, bacteria have learned to fight back, building resistance to the same drugs that once reliably vanquished them.
• The World Health Organisation has repeatedly warned the world is running out of effective antibiotics and urged governments and big pharma companies in 2017 to create a new generation of drugs to fight ultra-resistant supergerms.
• Bacteria can become resistant when patients use antibiotics they do not need or do not finish a course of treatment, giving the half-defeated bug a chance to recover and build immunity.