Over 70 international experts in medicine, infectious diseases, microbiology, and epidemiology gathered at the Foundation Mérieux’s Conference Center for the third edition of the World HAI Forum on health care-associated infections, a bioMérieux initiative. Forum participants call upon national and international health authorities and policy makers, the medical and veterinary communities, industry, and the general public to take action to avoid an impending public health catastrophe caused by the emergence and spread of bacteria that are resistant to all antibiotics.
While research to discover novel antibiotics has slowed to a virtual standstill, bacterial resistance has increased due to the massive use and misuse of antibiotics, not only for human health, but also for animals. The treatment of certain common infections is becoming difficult and the success of immunosuppressive therapies and surgical interventions (organ transplants, cardiac surgery), which are associated with a high risk of bacterial infection, could be compromised.
To the Forum experts, the emergence of pan-resistant NDM-1 bacteria and epidemic of multidrug-resistant E. coli infections currently in Europe should be taken as a major public health warning, indicating that a new era of antimicrobial resistance has begun. This must lead to a global awakening: the protection of antibiotics has now entered the sphere of sustainable development.
In a continuation of calls to action and proposals made by major national and international organizations (WHO, ECDC, IDSA, CDC, etc), the forum’s participants identified priority action areas to fight bacterial resistance and recommended 12 very concrete actions to be implemented—priorities for policy makers and health authorities, human and veterinary health care communities, the industry, and the general public—in the short to mid-term, to effectively address this serious problem.
Source: Press Release
