Drugs giants must help to solve the antibiotics crisis

It has been four decades since we’ve had a new class of antibiotics. Yet across the world, the number of people suffering from drug-resistant infections continues to rise at an alarming rate.

Without new antibiotics, blood poisoning, gonorrhoea and urinary tract infections, to name just three, risk becoming untreatable. More people will suffer fatal complications from routine medical procedures like chemotherapy or organ transplants. But the prospects for new treatments are more fragile than ever.

This month there has been a surge in reports on the issue. The World Health Organisation warned that there are too few drugs in the pipeline to deal with the growing threat of drug resistance.