New ReAct report: Governments need to take more leadership to ensure global sustainable access to effective antibiotics

While the world is caught up in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, it has gone largely unnoticed that more than thirty years has passed since the last class of antibiotics was discovered. Meanwhile global consumption of antibiotics continues to increase. In response, bacteria have developed resistance and are spreading as a silent but steady pandemic threatening to devastate healthcare and modern medicine as we know it.

The new ReAct report “Ensuring sustainable access to effective antibiotics for everyone, everywhere – How to address the global crisis in antibiotic Research and Development” includes a comprehensive summary and critical evaluation of recent initiatives to overcome the barriers to achieve sustainable access to antibiotics. As antibiotic resistance will continue to develop as long as we  depend on these medicines to treat bacterial infections, a continuous supply of new effective antibiotics is needed.