Greater Access To Antibiotics Is Essential For Curbing Drug Resistance

Broader funding, registration and stewardship is pivotal to making the antibiotic market more sustainable

Ramanan Laxminarayan

The writer is founder and director of the One Health Trust in Washington, a senior research scholar at Princeton University, and board chair at the Global Antibiotic Research & Development Partnership in Geneva As the latest wave of Covid-19 wanes, the hidden pandemic of antibiotic-resistant infections is becoming apparent.

Recent estimates indicate that about 1.3mn deaths each year are caused by drug-resistant infections — more than the toll from any infectious disease, apart from Covid-19 and tuberculosis.